In-service training as cognitive apprenticeship

In: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c365f7ca-9231-45b2-abb8-95a7dd6581d6

Abstract

The issue of this paper is to present and discuss a project for in-service training of some teachers employed within advanced vocational education (AVE), part of higher education in Finland. The political visions of an increased proportion of people with higher education, not only in Finland but in the Western world as a whole, have contributed to teachers encountering with new groups of students with non-academic backgrounds. These students have been accepted for studies but an increasing proportion fail in examinations. Especially language teachers at this specific AVE, a small polytechnic institution, were concerned about how the situation had developed. According to their understanding, an increasing amount of the students had dyslexia. Therefore the had attended courses and lectures, which however did not provide them with the tools they needed. An expert was enrolled, in order to work with the students. Instead of working with remedial programmes, her work focused on students; reading and writing strategies, which became a success. As a result, the school wanted her to work with an increasing number of students. Instead an in-service training project that would provide the teachers with 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), literacy practices (Street, 1984; Gee, 1996; Lea & Street, 1998) and cognitive apprenticeship (Rogoff, 1984, 1990). As a whole, the project consisted of two parts: firstly, the experts work with the students, and secondly, the in-service training for teachers. Here, the main focus is on in-service training for the teachers but as the content of this in-service training is students' reading and writing strategies, it is necessary to describe part of the project directed towards the students as well. The aim of the work directed to students at risk was on the one hand related to trying out and developing appropriate tools for ...