Cognitive apprenticeship. Constructivism.
My perspective on teaching and learning has been essentially constructivist for a long time. I still remember the first time I encountered the idea that the role of a teacher is to help students construct meaning for themselves. I was learning how to teach math to elementary-aged students in an undergraduate methods course and, for the first time, I was discovering math for myself. Learning how to construct a mathematical concept rather than just perform an algorithm was enlightening. I now know that it wasn’t simply an emphasis on exploration instead of rules that helped my right-sided brain understand math conceptually. A type of visually oriented cognitive apprenticeship was essential to building my understanding. Without being shown how to build an understanding of math concepts I would not have discovered them on my own.
In my subsequent career teaching children with learning disabilities, I struggled with the tension between pure constructivism and cognitive scaffolding. Riding that line of tension, what Vygotsky called the zone of proximal development, has always been a thrill to me as a teacher, even though things sometimes go off the rails. I will use behaviorist approaches because they work under the pressure to create measurable outcomes. They also work when classroom management (i.e. control) is at stake. But I’ve never been comfortable with the assumption that learning can be reduced to a change in behavior. My desire as a teacher has always been for students to build their own deep understanding of a topic. If this contributes to self-development and self-actualization (Rogers and Maslow), all the better. But my goal is the social construction of understanding through cognitive engagement.
Engagement is key and a strength of adult learners when they are self-directed. Self-direction, though, cannot be an assumed characteristic. Depending on the context, adults can find themselves in any of the stages that Grow (1991, 1994) outlined – dependent learner, interested learner, involved learner, and self-directed learner – because our psychological sense of autonomy is situational (Merriam, p. 70). Self-directed learning is not an all-or-nothing quality (Merriam, p. 65). For this reason, I strongly believe in the value of cognitive apprenticeship and its associated instructional strategies: modeling, coaching, reflection, articulation, and exploration (Dennen & Burner, p. 427). The concept of scaffolding seems to hold the most potential, strongly connected as it is to the Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Dennen & Burner, p. 432). In my personal experience with constructivist learning in math, it was the visual scaffolding that made the difference. To a child, the algebraic principle of isolating the variable in an equation looks complicated but the visual metaphor of a balancing scale can be used to teach even young children how to find the “hidden” variable by balancing the scale. They may not be ready to learn this through the language of math but, with the right cognitive scaffolding, kids can understand it conceptually. So can adults.
Project-Based Learning
But engagement needs more than scaffolds. If learning is about constructing meaning, learners need something meaningful to construct. Yes, collaborative learning strategies are needed because we co-construct knowledge and, yes, active learning strategies provide multiple means of engagement (a UDL principle) to reach a diversity of learners, but ultimately, problem-based or project-based learning situates learning in the real world. More than simply an active learning strategy, problem-based learning is, for me, a foundational element of helping learners of all ages to construct meaning. It’s whole-part-whole. It’s engaging. It requires scaffolding so the learner isn’t overwhelmed by the skills they don’t have yet. It has real-world complexity, forcing learners to deal with the ambiguity of not reaching “the” answer. It can also be transformational when the problem to be solved or the project to be engaged in has sociocultural significance that leads the learner beyond themselves.
The courses I teach in the UIC Assistive Technology Certificate Program are project-based because what we teach is practice and our students are working professionals. Recently, though, I’ve realized the social dimension of learning is missing from my project-based learning.
Collaborative Thinking
Merriam and Bierema (2013) discuss social cognitivism separately from cognitivism (information processing) because they see the social dimension as particularly relevant to adult learning. They explain, “not only do we cognitively process information as we learn, we also observe others and model their behavior” (p. 35). One version of social cognitivism I’ve been studying is Garrison’s Community of Inquiry (CoI) model because it focuses on elearning. This model combines social learning with cognitivism in a context of inquiry, an orientation Garrison labels “collaborative constructivism” (p. 15). Three elements interact with each other:
- Cognitive presence (based on Practical Inquiry processes)
- Teaching presence (leadership from instructors and students)
- Social presence
As educational theory, none of these elements is particularly innovative. But as I interrogated the model, I began to understand what it was saying. My courses had solid content and a good dose of teaching presence, but not much social presence because they are delivered online and asynchronously. A lot of the traditional “interactive” learning activities are difficult to translate to this learning environment. Discussion forums and even VoiceThread seem a poor substitute for small group Zoom breakouts conducted online in real time. How do we replicate the socio-emotional impact of live communication, with all its non-verbal cues and social negotiations, in an asynchronous environment? Perhaps this is the wrong question.
What shifted my thinking was this quote from Garrison:
Social presence is an important but complicated construct. A critical step in coping with this complexity is to keep in mind that primary focus of social presence in a CoI framework – this is its support of cognitive presence.
2016, p. 75
In other words, we are trying to create a specific kind of community around the central process of inquiry. It doesn’t matter that we can’t replicate all the social dimensions of face-to-face (or Zoom to Zoom) interactions in asynchronous environments. Social presence is still possible (and critical) when it is connected to the collaborative construction of meaning. Garrison continues: “[I]t is recognized that the essential function of social presence is to create an environment for thinking and learning collaboratively that is connected to the academic goals and dynamic of inquiry” (p. 75). He cites research that shows “social sensitivity was also evident whether that is face-to-face or reading between the lines in an online environment (Engell et al. 2014)” (p. 75). From this, I conclude that discussion posts or similar asynchronous technology (e.g. VoiceThread, FlipGrid) can be used to infuse social learning in asynchronous online environments if they are embedded in the process of inquiry.
References
Dennen, Vanessa & Burner, Kerry. (2008). The Cognitive Apprenticeship Model in Educational Practice. Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Garrison, D. R. (2016). Thinking Collaboratively: Learning in a Community of Inquiry. Routledge.
Merriam, S. B., & Bierema, L. L. (2013). Adult learning : Linking theory and practice. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.cc.uic.edu