Cognitive apprenticeship and teachers’ professional development

Abstract

The English government has focused upon a pattern of professional development that involves demonstration and modelling as a key element in the improvement of the teaching of 11–14 year olds (Key Stage 3 strategy). From 1997 the Nuffield Primary History Project (NPHP) has implemented a programme for the professional development of teachers built around Collins et al.’s theoretical framework (cognitive apprenticeship) that incorporates demonstration and modelling. Additional influences helped shape the NPHP programme, in particular: the formal and informal curriculum development and practitioner‐based research of the NPHP team; the Harland and Kinder typology of in‐service outcomes; Schon’s model of the reflective practitioner; ideas about socially constructed knowledge, situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation; extensive research into teachers’ knowledge bases following in the footsteps of Shulman and those of Neville Bennett; and the concept of trainees and teachers‐as‐researchers being central to evidence‐based practice. The NPHP team implemented its professional development programme in five English local education authorities from 1998 to 2003 with approximately 400 teachers participating in its courses. Analysis of the outcomes from one of these courses illustrates the extent to which cognitive apprenticeship underpinned the teachers’ assimilation and implementation of a wide range of expert teaching protocols in their own classroom teaching.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws extensively upon the pioneering work of Sue Jennings and Richard Dunne. It was they who introduced the Cognitive Apprenticeship model to Exeter and implemented it.