In-service training as cognitive apprenticeship

• The issue of this article is to present and discuss a project for in-service training of teachers employed by a school for vocational higher education (VHE). The basis for the project was an emerging need among teachers. Political visions of an increased proportion of people with higher education have contributed to teachers encountering new groups of students who have been accepted for studies but fail in examinations. Teachers at this specific VHE were concerned about how the situation had developed. As their initial understanding was that an increasing amount of the students had dyslexia, they attended in-service training on this. However, the information did not help them in their everyday work. An expert was enrolled, in order to work with the students. Her work, focusing students’ reading and writing actions, became a success. Therefore, the school wanted her to work with increasingly more students. Instead an in-service training project, aiming at the teachers appropriating the competence of the expert, was initiated. The project was designed based on socio-cultural perspectives on learning, drawing on the concepts distributed expertise (Palinscar & Brown, 1984) and cognitive apprenticeship (Rogoff, 1990). The results of the project are discussed on two levels: competence as an individual vs. a collective/organisational matter.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

literacy

cognitive apprenticeship

learning

vocational higher education

Education

Pedagogik

pedagogik

Education

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)