A lot of our high technology corporations provide cognitive apprenticeship
opportunities through internship programs. In these contexts, or at least
the one's I have seen, novices are mentored by professionals who help them
to learn how to think and act and perform within a corporate culture and
community of practice. Novices learn to think and act professionally by
sharing thought work with their mentor. These are institutionally
sanctioned apprenticeships that are designed to bring newcomers into the
community of thinkers of which the mentor is a "member."
One of the ways in which these instances of cognitive apprenticeship are
related to anthropological perspectives is that they involve guided
participation in communities and in thinking that is situated in real world
and (work) cultural contexts.
Cynthia
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Leander [SMTP:k-leand who-is-at students.uiuc.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 1998 3:37 PM
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: cognitive apprenticeship
One of the recommendations on changing K-12 schools in Bill Barowy's
quote
from "The Double Helix" is to "organize learning around the
principals of
cognitive apprenticeship."
This brought up a question I've been thinking about for some time:
What is cognitive apprenticeship?
I've read several pieces that talk about cognitive apprenticeship,
but
still can't figure out how it relates to anthropological
perspectives on
apprenticeship, despite the connections that are sometimes made in
the cog.
apprenticeship literature. (Does cognitive apprenticeship only make
sense
when we think about institutionalized schooling, or in other places
as
well?)
thanks,
Kevin
Kevin Leander
Doctoral Student, Curriculum & Instruction
(217) 333-6604
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/k-leand/homepage/index.html