Apprenticeship: Applications in Adult Education

Abstract

Abstract In apprenticeship, the teacher and content are fused. The teacher guides learners in an active learning process that promotes higher-order thinking skills as the learners are doing and thinking about their practice in the midst of a complex workflow. While teaching a skill set or body of knowledge in a workplace context, the teacher guides the learners' understanding of their role and identity in their community of practice. The concept of community of practice, a central philosophy of apprenticeship, is defined and explored. Examples of apprentice and mentor learning opportunities are provided to illustrate the power of this adult learning perspective. Reflections on the capabilities and limitations of the perspective provide readers with items to consider when applying apprenticeship concepts in their practice of adult education. Introduction Trade guilds in the Middle Ages formalized the concepts of the apprentice-as-learner and the skilled craftsman-as-teacher. Traditional based in the skilled trades, assume the newcomer has little formal academic training. The apprentice acquires both explicit and tacit knowledge of the trade through years of interaction with the craftsman. Today, apprenticeships are used in many complex workflow or learning situations that involve interpretation and judgment (Donoghue, Harris, & Weitzman, 1999). Apprenticeships provide newcomers with elementary activities to acquaint them with the workflow and to determine their ability to pursue further training. Intellectual apprenticeships, or internships, are used in professions that require the newcomer to have completed rigorous academic studies prior to practicing with a teacher. Internships, begun in the medical profession in the late 1800s (Premont, 1990), are used in professions such as medicine, teaching, music, science, and professional development to integrate complex concepts, multiple procedures, and dynamic environments with academic knowledge (Johnson & Pratt, 1998). As technology advances are seen in all facets of work, including business, manufacturing, and retail sales, a majority of twenty-first century apprentices are likely to be interns. Active learning, which involves all the senses in the process of transferring and applying knowledge, promotes higher-order thinking skills and is critical to apprenticeship. As the learning pyramid in Figure 1 shows, active learning results in a high level of retention as the learner is hearing, seeing, saying, and doing the skill (Dirkx and Prenger, 1997). In an apprenticeship, the learner is involved in both doing and thinking about skills in a work place context (Pratt, 1998). The teacher is a guide, assisting the learner to use prior knowledge, work experience, academics, life context, and interests to master the skill or process being taught. Community of Practice The apprenticeship perspective involves a social pursuit, rather than an individual one, where content is learned in the context of joint enterprise, called practice. Its purpose is to develop knowledge through social participation (Wenger, 2000a). Learning results by engaging in guided social practice to negotiate meaning, by using imagination to see connections through time and space, and by aligning activities to broaden the enterprise (Wenger, 1998). In this social setting, knowledge is used, reused, negotiated, defined, shaped, connected, stewarded, and valued by members of a community of practice; thus, apprenticeship learning is a developmental interplay between social competence and personal experience. Today, such communities of practice are vital in professional fields for enculturating interns, as well as in skilled trades for training apprentices. There are various levels of participation within a community of practice, as shown in Figure 2 (Wenger, 2000a). The Core group, comprised of the masters, is a small, energizing group who establishes ideals and is highly respected by the community. …