Effect of Cognitive Apprenticeship Instructional Method on Auto-Mechanics Students

Abstract

This study focused on the effect of cognitive apprenticeship instructional method on the achievement of auto-mechanics students in River State, Nigeria. A quasi experimental pre-test design with an experimental and non-experimental control group was adopted. The population of the study comprised all the 212 second-year auto-mechanics students of the four technical colleges in Rivers State, no sampling was carried out as the entire population of the students was used. Three instruments were used for data collection. These were cognitive apprenticeship instructional lesson plans, which served as the treatment, traditional lesson plans, and an auto-mechanics achievement test. Five research questions and five hypotheses were formulated, mean and standard deviation was used to analyze the data for answering the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study found that the students taught with cognitive apprenticeship instructional method tended to have higher mean post-test scores in the auto-mechanics achievement test than those taught with conventional lecture method. Based on this, it was recommended that auto-mechanics teachers should always adopt cognitive apprenticeship instructional components, namely: modeling, scaffolding, coaching, articulation and exploration. This will enable them to cater for the diverse learning styles of the students.