Apprenticeship has a long history as a powerful educational strategy. Recent work in anthropology and education has suggested that apprenticeship learning can provide a useful model for designing meaningful learning environments (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989). Rather than "telling" learners about a discipline, apprentices are immersed within a community in which they engage in practices "at the elbows" of more competent peers, experts, or "old-timers." This is consistent with the recommendations of science educators who have advocated for active learners doing scientific investigations, instead of passive learners receiving science instruction (American Association of Science, 1993; Ruopp, Gal, Drayton, & Pfister, 1993; Soloway, Krajcik, Blumenfeld, & Marx, 1996).

While an investigation is a comprehensive perspective focused on actively engaging learners in authentic scientific inquiry, apprenticeship goes one step further and situates this investigation in the context of the well-worn path of a particular scientist's research agenda. Here, the apprentice is under an expert's tutelage, using the scientist's lab and equipment, doing the science that contributes to the scientist's work, and doing the science in which the scientist (and potentially the apprentice) has a vested interest. This experience allows the learner to gain insights into the communal nature of science and may facilitate the learner's adoption of ways of perceiving and interacting with the world that are consistent with those of real scientists.

In its second year, the Science Apprenticeship Camp (SAC) was established on the time-honored principles associated with apprenticeship (intense relationships with a mentor, learning through doing authentic activity, using authentic tools, and learning as part of a community that values the practices). The SAC was designed to match middle school learners with scientists in the School of Science at a large Midwestern urban university. Participants worked in groups of four as they conducted scientific research and developed a scientific presentation under the expert mentorship of a practicing scientist and with the guidance of a middle school teacher. As a research project, the SAC created a unique opportunity to understand a learning context that embodied many of the characteristics of apprenticeships and that worked with the traditional clients of education (in this case middle school children), but in the environment where scientists carry out their practice. This is in contrast to the literature related to apprenticeships that has been framed either in making the classroom more apprenticeship-like or studying apprentices working for extended periods of time directly within a community. In contrast, at SAC, participants who were not qualified to become "real" scientist apprentices (these were 8th graders, not graduate students), but were immersed in a two-week learning experience in which they worked with a scientist in his or her laboratory. In understanding this potential, we will draw on and examine simulation and participation models for establishing authenticity. 

Doing Science at the Elbows of Experts: Issues Related to the Science Apprenticeship Camp