To combat these tendencies, cognitive apprenticeships "…are designed, among other things, to bring these tacit processes into the open, where students can observe, enact, and practice them with help from the teacher…".
Cognitive scientists maintain that the context in which learning takes place is critical (e.g., Godden & Baddeley, 1975).
Based on findings such as these, Collins, Duguid, and Brown (1989) argue that cognitive apprenticeships are less effective when skills and concepts are taught independently of their real-world context and situation.
Finally, in the autonomous stage, the learner's skill becomes honed and perfected until it is executed at an expert level.
The final step, exploration, intends to guide the novice towards independence and the ability to solve and identify problems within the domain on their own.
For example, a math teacher might write out explicit steps and work through a problem aloud, demonstrating their heuristics and procedural knowledge.
Through inquiry teaching (Collins & Stevens, 1982), teachers ask students a series of questions that allow them to refine and restate their learned knowledge and form explicit conceptual models.
[1] A technique for reflection would be examining the past performances of both an expert and a novice, and highlighting similarities and differences.
The goal of reflection is for students to look back and analyze their performances with desire to understand and improve the behavior of an expert.