Vicarious Learning Blog

Employee Training: Apprenticeship Learning

A recent entry on the blog Workplace Visions looks at Observational Learning: A Key Component of Employee Training. In particular, the article is concerned really with what is commonly known as 'apprenticeship learning' or cognitive apprenticeship. In the particular blog post they concentrate on simple examples of learning through observation, but true apprenticeships are much more complex than this. The medieval concept of an apprenticeship not only required learning and developing the requisite skills on ones trade, it also involved a period (often a long period) of consolidation in which one worked at a Journeyman (Geselle). During this period one would deepen one's knowledge and learning further by travelling and picking up experience from a range of workshops and masters skilled in your art. In effect the time as a Journeyman is analogous to that of taking part in Master classes. n.b. a related research paper looking at on-line apprenticeship learning is: Examining social interaction patterns for on-line apprenticeship learning: Object-oriented programming as the knowledge domain by Bennedsen et al in the European Journal of Open Distance and e-Learning (EURODL).

Posted at 04:50PM Jun 24, 2008 by Finbar Dineen in General  |  Comments[0]