The Apprenticeship of Observation and Computer Science Education

In this episode I unpack the impact of an apprenticeship of observation and what computer science educators can do about it.

You ever wondered why people like
politicians who have never taught a day
in their life are so opinionated about
education and education policy or just
you know teaching in general there's a
concept coined by somebody named lordy
back in the 70s who's like an
educational scholar known as the
apprenticeship of observation that
explains what's happening basically the
apprenticeship of observation is the
idea that opinions around education or
teaching grow out of thousands of hours
of observing teachers from a student
perspective so for example if you go
from school from kindergarten all the
way through 12th grade that's 13 years
of observing people teach if you go into
higher education that's even more time
spent observing somebody typically five
days a week in a subject area that's
very different than like another
profession like a lawyer how often do
people who go into law actually sit down
and observe lawyers do what they do on a
daily basis now the thing is because
there's so much exposure to education or
teaching and what people think it looks
like people get these ideas in their
head of hey this thing worked really
well for me then it must work really
well for other people everybody must be
experiencing similar or the same things
you have this like very narrow scope of
what education looks like from your
perspective but what's missing are some
important key details like why are
teachers doing something a certain way
what about the internal monitoring and
adjusting based on how students are
responding and progressing through their
learning but it also gives a very
incomplete understanding of like the
different struggles that teachers deal
with on a day-to-day basis for example
as a student you likely don't see all
the difficult conversations with parents
how degrading professional development
can be to teachers how many times have I
been treated like a child or like I
didn't know something when I've
literally written chapters on a topic
that I was forced to attend or just you
know how much of waste of a Time
meanings can be or how much work
Educators do on weeknights weekends and
like so-called breaks and whatnot or how
some teachers are forced to do what's
best for a class average on a test
rather than what they know what is best
for each student or how many jobs
Educators have outside of teaching
because it doesn't pay enough Etc this
idea of the apprenticeship of
observation is kind of like if you watch
me like play the drums for several hours
a day for a decade and then thinking
that you've developed an understanding
of how to drum without ever picking up a
pair of sticks or even understood what I
was doing and why I was doing that as
opposed to something else when
practicing this false sense of
confidence and understanding of
something when you're missing so many
key details and whatnot can have some
profound impacts on conversations with
parents or admin or people who create
educational policy who have never taught
or even in professional development
teacher education and curriculum
development so we're gonna kind of
unpack each of these in this episode how
many times have you had a conversation
with parents for the like that's not how
I was taught or the old ways or the best
ways this is an example of
apprenticeship of observation they've
been apprenticed into an understanding
of Education because of their decade
plus experience in the classroom they
haven't seen all the research and all
the practices that have developed since
then and so they look at what you might
be doing in the classroom and go I don't
know about that that's not how it was
for me so you should do it the way that
worked for me even though there might be
a ton of supporting research and
evidence that says that's actually not
as effective as what you might actually
be doing in the classroom parents don't
understand that they're missing a lot of
key data they only saw what worked for
them and not all the times were that
exact same pedagogical approach didn't
work for their peers what can be even
worse when working with parents is when
they have like some kind of part-time
teaching like a coaching position and so
they'll often like assume whatever works
in whatever sport they're working in
will work in every single context but
one of the key things that they don't
seem to understand is that the athletes
that they are working with are choosing
to participate there and are likely
paying to participate which is very
different from working with students who
are mandated to be there for a decade
plus of their life when they might not
want to be nor there has many external
influences that would impact their
coaching apprenticeship of observation
can also lead to some problems with the
admin especially admin who haven't
taught in a long time they might not
understand fully the amount of pressures
that teachers are under right now due to
like the different policies that are
having a negative impact on their
teaching how students and parents are
communicating in and outside of the
classroom and with the teacher so all on
admin might come into your room and
might give you some kind of evaluation
on how you're doing they are simply
observing but they don't necessarily
have the context that you might have in
terms of how difficult teaching is
compared to a decade ago there's so many
more more factors to consider like I
started teaching my senior year of high
school in 2003 like really getting into
it teaching private lessons teaching
drum lines Etc and then full time in the
classroom worked with Evergreen
kindergarten through doctoral student
over the last couple of decades and
there's so many more things to consider
nowadays than there were even 10 years
ago like a lot of the problems that
happens with educational policy
politicians have seen what worked for
them in education so they try and
replicate a model that was biased
towards certain ontologies axiologies
and epistemologies so certain ways of
being things that are valued and ways of
knowing and learning this is not
acknowledged or discussed Enough by all
sides of the political aisle what worked
for a very specific demographic or very
specific sets of identities does not
work for all so when certain
demographics get elected into office and
they're surrounded by people who look
like them who share similar identities
they're often not considering identities
outside of that little bubble that
they're in this can have a profoundly
negative impact on educational policy
because it's like hey it works for me it
works for Susie over there works for
Johnny over there it must work well for
everybody well well maybe but probably
not but again because politicians were
apprenticed through their observation
over Decades of experience in education
without actually knowing what's going on
behind the scenes or in the head of a
teacher that is working with them they
have these ingrained understandings of
what education looks like that ignores
everything else all these other factors
that we must consider apprenticeship of
observation also creates an interesting
problem with teacher education and
professional development pre-service
Educators so like undergraduates who are
getting degrees in education will often
come into education experiences wanting
to imitate what worked for them which is
great until they realize that what
worked for them won't necessarily work
well for everybody else and that there
are many different approaches that can
be taken from many different types of
identities different scenarios different
contexts Etc on the professional
development side of things there's also
some teachers who are new to computer
science maybe they've been teaching for
a while they can often be the ones who
hold back their students with comments
like it won't work for my students or
you just don't understand what my
teaching situation is like which is
interesting because in-service Educators
often don't have that National scope or
context or even just like a regional
scope of context that many professional
development and curriculum developers
have but there's also problems with
apprenticeship of observation with
curriculum development if the curriculum
developers do not have a wide range of
experiences they can create content that
is for very narrow range of observations
or very narrow sets of identities now in
episode 150 which is titled fostering
intersectional identities through
rhizomatic learning John Stapleton and I
read a paper that we co-authored that
kind of talks about a curricular
approach that you could take that would
work really well for a variety of
identities to make it so that if you
have 30 kids in a class they could
explore things in 30 different
directions take 30 different paths to go
to 30 different landmarks create 30
different types of projects Etc or to
follow a well-worn path it's up to the
students rather than to a curriculum
developer who has never met the student
so if you want to learn more about that
check out episode 150 which I link to in
the show notes at girardeliri.com but
rather than just like spell out here's
the Doom and Gloom that comes with
apprenticeship of observation and
putting a label on something you may
have noticed let's talk about well what
can Educators actually do about this
just understanding this concept is is a
start to understanding how some people
develop these assumptions and
misconceptions or misunderstandings
about what education teaching learning
Etc looks like so how can we actually
like improve discourse around teaching
and learning to be very candid and Frank
with us you're fighting more than a
decade of someone developing opinions
through their apprenticeship of
observation so this is going to be a
difficult conversation one
recommendation that I have when working
on apprenticeship of observation with
parents is to share not just how a
student is doing but what you are doing
and why you are doing it that way to
help their specific child which might be
different from how you're trying to help
another child and you can explain to
them that that is a good thing every
child has unique individual interests
and needs and if the parent has multiple
kids you can be like well is Susie the
exact same way as Johnny do they have
the exact same like preferred methods of
learning are they interested in the
exact same content etc etc if you can do
that and say well I have a class of 30
kids who are very different not just two
kids who are different so I'm going to
be using an approach that's going to try
and help your individual child rather
than just an approach that is a blanket
and will hopefully work for the majority
of the students now when it comes to
like working with admin who have this
apprenticeship of observation and don't
necessarily remember what it's like to
be in a classroom or haven't been in it
recent enough to understand what the
most recent challenges are you could ask
admin for multiple perspectives or
approaches to try different things with
different students rather than having
them encourage or promote only one
approach just kind of help them unpack
that there are many ways to teach and to
learn and again what might work really
well for one student might not work
really well for another so helping an
admin kind of come up with some own
ideas to help support you can also help
them to understand hey there are many
different ways that might work now if
you are an admin I encourage you to ask
some questions of your teachers to seek
a multi-perspectable approach which I've
talked about on many of these other
podcast episodes rather than assuming
that there is one correct way to work
with every single student now on the
educational policy side of things one of
the things that we can do is actually
invite politicians to the classroom but
don't make it a PR stunt let them see
what it's actually like teaching now why
am I telling you this I worked in a
district where a politic Edition was
invited to the district and I was
teaching at a school that this
politician was not observing however I
was asked the week or two before the
politician actually came to go visit the
school that he was going to and teach a
class how to do computer science the way
that I did it at my school and over the
course of multiple lessons I taught them
all the very basics of like how to
engage in interest in learning work on
multiple platforms Etc and create things
that were interesting to them then when
the politician came to that school which
is not my school I was asked to visit in
there and pretend like I was basically
teaching there and to answer some
questions and the kids were also able to
ask some questions of the politician
these questions were literally scripted
out in advance and had to have been
approved by the pr team the politician
was not going to just answer any
question and the politician had a
schedule down to the minute of what
rooms they were going to be in what they
were going to visit what they were going
to see so the school looked beautiful
all the positive he was going to take
like everything had artwork of students
creating stuff on the walls and yeah it
looked great but if you were to go into
another site for the building or in a
different room you would have had a very
different scenario you would have had an
actual classroom with their actual
teacher in there rather than myself as a
guest working with some kids that only
met the week or two before and who was
pretending to basically teach a class
that I didn't actually know when you
invite in award-winning Educators with
doctorates and education into the
classroom and pretend like that's just
the normal experience that a politician
walks into and sees it's going to give
them a very biased understanding go oh
yeah things are great you know what we
cut funding in this District drastically
over the last few years but hey look at
how well they're doing they're creating
all sorts of really interesting things
we could cut funding more because I mean
look at all this great stuff that
they're doing in this District why do we
need to continue to add more to the
budget when they're doing just fine
without it so if we want to combat
apprenticeship of observation from
people who may have gone to wealthy
schools their entire life and don't know
what it's like to actually work in learn
in or teach in a title one school or
many other variants of schools that are
out there we need to actually invite
them into a classroom to see what it
looks like an actual classroom to see
what an actual day looks like or even
better have politicians substitute for
some kids who don't know their
politicians see what it's like to
actually teach do that for a week see if
that changes their opinions on teacher
pay now when it comes to pre-service and
in-service Educators there are some
things that we can do to combat the
apprenticeship of observation that
teachers might have some Scholars have
argued that the apprenticeship of
observation means that teacher education
will actually have a very small impact
on teaching because you might have like
four years of working with pre-service
Educators inside of a Collegiate setting
but they're going to have like 13 plus
years of K-12 context that they're going
to draw on with their apprenticeship of
our observation and go that's the way to
teach this four years that I learned
over here is fine but I want to go back
to the thing that I learned when I was
actually a student in a K-12 context
however there has been some research
over the last couple of decades that
have said well no you can actually have
a profound impact on pre-service and
in-service Educators regardless of what
their apprenticeship of observation look
like one way that you can do this is by
modeling pedagogy so unpacked why you
use that pedagogy and then encouraging
reflection on that particular pedagogy
so for example in my student teaching I
had a teacher who while he was teaching
a lesson he would turn and look at me
and say the reason why I modified this
is because of blah and I was like oh I
was wondering why he was modifying the
lesson students didn't know that they
were sitting there just like learning
how to sing or play an instrument Etc
and the teacher was explaining out loud
in the middle of a lesson things that
he's doing just turn and look at me I'm
doing this or I notice this I'm changing
this now I'm going to do this thing and
I need to continue teaching that was so
helpful it was something that I modeled
in the music education classes that I
would teach at universities for the
undergraduate and graduate levels is
when I noticed like students seem to
need more time to think through a
particular question I just say that out
loud and say so I'm monitoring I'm
adjusting let's give some more time on
this we'll get to the next thing in 10
more minutes instead of in five these
kind of approaches can help students to
unpack why you are doing what you were
doing which is like more profound than
just observing somebody teaching another
thing that you can do is you can also
encourage teachers to observe other
teach features and to be able to unpack
why they're teaching in one way and not
a different way in episode 62 which is
titled on methodology and computer
science teaching as critical and
reflective practices talk about an idea
by rigelski who mentions that teachers
can kind of get stuck into one method
then kind of like turn it into an
ideology like I'm only going to do
constructionism or only constructivism
or I'm only going to do project-based
learning Etc this adherence to a
particular framework or pedagogy or
approach or philosophy whatever at the
cost of ignoring all the other options
out there can create some biases and
some problems with teaching that might
work really well for certain groups of
students and not work really well for
other groups of students so it's
important for teachers to observe other
ways of teaching and learning and go oh
that's not at all how I would have
taught that but that worked great in
that context and for those students
maybe in a similar context in similar
types of students I might modify and
adjust to do that as well and again
learning from multiple different
perspectives it can broaden your
understanding of how to teach in
different ways because I've worked with
every grade kindergarten through
doctoral student and I've taught music
education Drumline percussion band
General music computer science maker
space Etc like I have all these
different experiences I can draw upon
and go I'm gonna make this Drumline
rehearsal more like a Makerspace or I'm
gonna make this maker space more like a
drumline I don't know these are some
different things that you can do when
you have learned different contexts to
teach in different ways or different
approaches to teach if you don't have
that opportunity like let's say you're
the only teacher at a school or you
don't have time to go and observe other
teachers one of the things you could do
is record your own teaching and reflect
on what worked well and what could be
improved now if you are a teacher
educator or a professional development
provider or something you can provide
some guidance on some things to think
through or to look out for that they
might not have considered this is
important because like teachers don't
necessarily know what kind of biases
they have especially the unconscious
biases in terms of like different
pedagogical approaches or how they're
working with certain students versus
other students Etc all these things are
very important that we can actually
consider and help them unpack if we
provide some Frameworks or lenses to
think through and that's largely on
teacher educator years as well as
professional development providers but
that's something that you can do in your
own plcs if you run a PLC think of a
different lens or different framework or
a different thing for teachers to focus
on with their own teaching they record
their own teaching they can go back and
observe it and go oh I didn't actually
realize that I was not focusing on a b
or c instead of us doing X Y and Z Etc
now if you are a curriculum provider or
you work with curriculum providers one
of the things that can be done to combat
the apprenticeship of observation is to
broaden the scope of an understanding by
having a team that has a wide range of
experiences and backgrounds in education
if you are unable to get that then find
multiple curricula to use like if you
use scratch there are many ways that you
can work on scratch like I have a bunch
of scratch videos on my website I've
created several hundred videos over the
course of the last decade but that's
just from my perspective and from my
experiences working in education like if
you use a creative Computing guide from
Harvard that's going to be different
than the content that I created which is
also going to be different from CS first
by Google which is going to be different
from like the tutorials made by MIT in
scratch's website there are so many
different ways and different approaches
that you can pull from so if you are an
educator and you're trying to think of
like okay well how do I get multiple
perspectives and whatnot that will work
for the students I'm working with we'll
then pull from multiple curricula but if
you are the person who is actually
writing that content and let's say
you're on a small team like I was so
it's the only person who created content
in a former organization intentionally
build in to your design content that is
encouraged to be modified that way it
can actually meet the local and
individualized needs of the students the
teachers communities Etc that will use
that content and again in episode 150
fostering intersectional identities
through rhizomatic learning John
Stapleton and I talk about how you might
be able to do that all this being said
we need to not just teach the students
that we work with but society as a whole
not just what we are doing in the
classroom but why we are doing what we
are doing for example there has been
those anti-deia laws that have been
coming out and I talk about this in
episode 196 which is titled we need to
talk about this if politicians
understood that the reason why I am
using culturally relevant pedagogy is
because it will treat your child as a
unique individual and will make it so
they're actually more interested in
learning as opposed to me trying to like
push some kind of woke narrative or
whatever they think I'm actually doing
they understood that why rather than
what a news organization tells them I'm
doing and why I'm doing it even though
it has nothing to do with why I'm
actually doing what I'm doing maybe we
wouldn't have those anti-deeia laws and
maybe if people in power were to reflect
on their own apprenticeship of
observation and to understand that it is
a very incomplete narrative not only
because the scope is narrow but because
they don't understand why an educator
did what they did maybe we wouldn't have
so many problems with communication with
parents with politicians sometimes with
admin Etc but those are just my own
musings on this particular idea this
concept I'm curious in what ways have
you realized that you've been
apprenticed through your own
observations in education how does that
create certain biases about how you
prefer to teach based on the way that
you prefer to learn and does that
actually align with the students that
you work with hopefully it does and if
it doesn't there there are many podcast
episodes that talk about many different
approaches that you can use to teach
Computer Science Education as there are
over 200 episodes on my website at
jaredoleery.com as well as thousands of
hours of drumming content and a bunch of
gaming content because I create content
for fun and if you enjoy any of the free
content that I create I highly encourage
you to share it with other people as it
just helps more people find all this
free content thank you so much for
listening to this episode stay tuned for
an episode next week until then I hope
you're all staying safe and are having a
wonderful week and if you made it this
far into the episode here's a little
image of Minnie she's been asleep during
this episode she's absolutely adorable
just sleeping underneath her two-story
doggle bed that I built for her so if
you're watching this on YouTube enjoy
she's cute

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- Fostering Intersectional Identities through Rhizomatic Learning
  - In this episode, Jon Stapleton and I read our (2022) publication titled “Fostering intersectional identities through rhizomatic learning,” which uses mapping as a metaphor for individualized learning.
- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
  - In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
- On "Methodolatry" and [Computer Science] Teaching as Critical and Reflective Praxis
  - In this episode I unpack Regelski’s (2002) publication titled “On ‘methodolatry’ and music teaching as critical and reflective praxis,” which problematizes the lack of philosophy, theory, and professional praxis in music education. Although this article is published in a music education journal, I discuss potential implications for computer science educators.
- More episodes related to discourse
- More episodes related to methodolatry
- All other episodes
Scratch content I mentioned
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter