A cognitive apprenticeship approach to engineering education: the role of learning styles

Abstract

Prior to the creation of engineering schools, engineering was taught in an apprenticeship style. However, from the onset of formal engineering education, engineering curricula have been based largely on science and mathematical knowledge. Applied subject based learning (usually called traditional teaching methods) is still a common teaching model in engineering education programmes today. The professor or tutor passes information to the students, the newly acquired knowledge is applied to specific problems and communication between students and professor (and between students themselves) is limited. In order to better prepare future engineers for the workplace, many engineering educators are implementing innovative approaches to teaching and learning in their classrooms (e.g. problem based learning). In the work described in this paper, a cognitive apprenticeship approach is used. This teaching model includes the main assumptions of the problem based learning approach and also defines instructional methods for enhancing learning. The model was used for teaching two groups of civil engineering students enrolled in their third and fourth year. Results of the two experiments showed that the cognitive apprenticeship approach used for teaching undergraduate civil engineering students was favoured by most of the students, independent of their preferred learning style. The implications of these findings with regard to implementing the cognitive apprenticeship approach in civil engineering education are discussed.

Estilos de aprendizaje, variables sociodemográficas y rendimiento académico en estudiantes de Ingeniería de Edificación

“…El personal docente, a través de sus prácticas de aula, debe conseguir que los métodos empleados permitan que la totalidad de estudiantes pueda aprender y desarrollar toda su capacidad de aprendizaje (Felder y Brent, 2005;Geçit y Delihasan, 2014;Poitras y Poitras, 2011;Salas-Cabrera, 2014). El conocimiento de los EA y su interacción con los de enseñanza permiten comprender y mejorar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (Eishani, Saa'd y Nami, 2014;Hamidah et al, 2009;Kumar, Kumar y Smart, 2004), para ello, el profesorado deberá ser diseñador de ambientes de aprendizaje adaptados a las peculiaridades de sus discentes, de tal manera que facilite los procesos de aprendizaje y la adquisición de competencias metacognitivas (Dogaru, Drăghicescu, Petrescu y Stăncescu, 2008).…”

Coastal Engineering Education and Coastal Models

“…Cognitive Apprenticeship (CA) is an example of trying to improve on LT and PBL, (e.g. Collins et al,1991;Lindsay et al, 2008, Poitras andPoitras, 2011). The idea is that students work directly with a master (tutor) on a practical problem and learn problem solving reasoning and strategies, which are not taught in traditional LT and PBL, from the master.…”

Using mobile devices to support cognitive apprenticeship in clinical nursing practice – a case study

“…Cognitive apprenticeship has been popularly used in nursing education during the 2000s because of its emphasis on social-constructivist methods of supporting learning (Austin, 2009;Poitras and Poitras, 2011;Woolley and Jarvis, 2007). With the rising of mobile technology, research about integrating mobile device into cognitive apprenticeship has been conducted in diverse fields such as mathematics education, computer science learning, educational games design, environmental education and history learning (Chang et al, 2013;Chen and Chen, 2014;Klopfer and Squire, 2008;Ma et al, 2008;.…”