Coaching via cognitive apprenticeship

Abstract

At Carnegie Mellon's Silicon Valley campus we employ a learn-by-doing educational approach in which nearly all student learning, and thus instruction, is in the context of realistic, team-based projects. Consequently, we have adopted coaching as our predominant teaching model. In this paper we reflect on our experience with the nature of teaching by coaching using a framework derived from Cognitive Apprenticeship, and explain how we employ the techniques it suggests in our teaching. We also discuss a range of instructional tensions that arise in teaching by coaching and present a survey of student attitudes regarding the effectiveness of our approach. Copyright 2010 ACM.