Re: cognitive apprenticeship

Katherine Goff (Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu)
Sun, 18 Jan 1998 08:43:16 -0700

Naoki writes:
>The popular view says that the "expert" has experinces and he/she has
>skills and knowldge already.
>People tend to treat the "expert" and the "novice" just as natural
>categories.

>I think, actually, the "expert" is always, in somse sense, the novice.

<snip>

>The new computerized machines or models constantly come to the
>factory and the "expert" has to reorganize and recontextualize
>his "old" knowledge and resources again and again with the "novices"
>and the new machines. The new models carry the new kinds of
>troubles exactly as the new Macintosh computer and its OS 8.

>Diagnosis of machines is embedded in social interaction and there is
>no fixed steps for diagnosis.
I would like to speak from the perspective of someone labeled "the
expert" in Macintosh computers in my building. I am the computer
teacher and am expected to know all about computers. I have struggled
to keep abreast of the changes in technology for the past 9
years-mostly in my own time and/or on the job. I am often called on to
"fix" problems with computers in the classrooms with information from
"novice" teachers or "novice" students about what the problem is.

>The traditional novice-expert paradigm prevents ones from
>closer looking at this coweaving sequence exactly as "a teaching
>curriculum".
The context of a teacher working in a classroom and sending a child to
request for help from "the expert" makes it difficult for the teacher
to ever learn how to deal with the computer on her own. The typical
scenorio is that I come into the room and she speaks to be from across
the room where she is trying to teach the curriculum for which she
feels overwhelminly responsible and cannot stop to watch me "fix" the
computer which is, in her eyes, my domain. This context is being
challenged at the district (and societal) levels and teachers are being
expected to know and do more and to weave the computer into their daily
practice. Many teachers have not realized that this new (to them)
expectation is imminent and unavoidable.

Where am I goin with all this? Naoki ends up with a comment about
research being
>artificially organized with an experimenter or
>an interviewer even though it tries to simulate the actual work
>situation.

Most research in the classroom on computer use in the classroom
involves the intervention of at least one researcher who takes on some
of the "computer expert" role as she works with students at the
computer. Academicians and policy makers may learn a lot about such
research, and the students who were involved in the research probably
benefit from the extra attention and assistance, but what about the
teacher? Teachers agree to participate in research mostly because they
see the opportunity to use the extra warm body(ies) of the researchers
to help their students. Not to step into the "novice" role and learn
something from them.

(Painting with broad strokes and primary colors-lots of emotion around
this issue.)

Kathie

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Life's backwards,
Life's backwards,
People, turn around.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Sinead O'Connor and John Reynolds
Fire on Babylon: Universal Mother^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ouray.cudenver.edu/~kegoff/index.html