Anchored instruction is an approach to teaching developed by the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University, led by psychologist John Bransford, in which learning is situated within a realistic, engaging problem-solving scenario, or anchor, rather than taught as a set of abstract, decontextualized facts and procedures. The group's best-known application was the Adventures of Jasper Woodbury, a series of videodisc-based mathematics adventures produced from the late 1980s onward, each presenting students with a complex narrative containing all the information needed to solve an embedded real-world problem, such as planning a rescue mission under time and resource constraints. The approach aimed to give students a reason to want to learn a given skill by first showing them a genuine need for it, and research on the Jasper series reported improvements in students' problem-solving confidence and their ability to identify and formulate problems, not only to solve ones already stated for them.
Facts
Core ClaimDeveloped by the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University, led by psychologist John Bransford: learning is situated within a realistic problem-solving scenario, or anchor, such as the Adventures of Jasper Woodbury video series. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationAnchored instruction, lead sectionQuote, Anchored instruction, lead section
Anchored Instruction is a technology centered learning approach, which falls under the social constructionism paradigm.
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