An Old Idea Makes a Comeback

By Eugene Linden/Palo Alto

The word evokes quaint images of cabinetmakers or alchemists teaching eager youths the secrets of their trade. Yet apprenticeship -- the acquisition of knowledge through practice in the presence of a master -- is a time-tested teaching method whose applications go far beyond the shop floor. The principle is at work every time someone takes a total-immersion language lesson, follows a doctor on his rounds to learn how to practice medicine, or tags along with a crack dealer to learn the ropes of the drug trade. In fact, a body of scientists and educators maintains that it is the primary means by which people learn. "If you look at any successful learning situation, chances are you will find elements of apprenticeship," says John Seely Brown of the Institute for Research on Learning in Palo Alto, Calif.

Faced with mounting evidence of the failure of efforts to pour information into students' minds, a number of educators and researchers would like to see more apprenticeship in the classroom. Says Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers: "Schools are not organized according to the way most people learn. We might be more successful if we structured learning in schools more like the way things are done in the real world -- with apprenticeship-type programs connecting abstract symbols to the solution of real problems."

Apprenticeship has produced promising results in various experimental programs. Techniques devised by Ann Brown and Annemarie Palincsar, while doing education research at the University of Illinois, raised reading-comprehension , scores in a Springfield seventh-grade class from 20% to 80% in 20 days. The method was to make the children approach a text the way a teacher does: by formulating questions, summarizing, predicting what will come next and isolating problems.

In mathematics, apprenticeship methods focus less on formulas than on analyzing the way a mathematician chooses a path to a solution. The technique is valid for higher math as well as basic arithmetic. In East Lansing, Mich., Magdalene Lampert's fifth-graders connect numbers to real-world situations. Instead of dutifully working out common denominators to compare fractions, for example, one of her students reasoned that "five-sixths is smaller than seven-eighths because the piece that is missing in seven-eighths is smaller than in five-sixths." Says Lampert: "This reveals more complicated thinking and a better understanding of symbols than the blind use of rules."

A century ago, educators differentiated cognitive skills from the "lower" vocational skills taught by apprenticeship. This produced a school system in which math, science and reading are taught through abstractions that, in the words of one expert, are "void of the complexities of the real world and thus irrelevant and even boring." The results can sometimes be ludicrous. Alan Schoenfeld, an expert on math education at Berkeley, notes that students characteristically answer "seven buses remainder ten" when asked how many 35-passenger buses are needed to transport 255 students. In practical terms, of course, the answer is eight, since the remaining ten students will need another bus.

Although apprenticeship can be a highly effective tool, it requires greater personal involvement and a deeper understanding of the subject matter than most conventional teaching methods. To help make up for the shortage of professionals skilled in this technique, educators look to a new generation of computer-based teaching tools that work with students much the way a teacher does, walking them through incorrect answers to show where they went astray. The key to these new tools is the concept of apprenticeship. Says Lauren Resnick, past president of the 14,500-member American Educational Research Association: "Apprenticeship has the promise of building abstract abilities in our children that are well grounded in actual experience."