Consulting  

In a consulting relationship, more experienced students become advisors or consultants for less-experienced students. This form of collaboration is different from cognitive apprenticeship in that interaction with the consultant does not follow a predetermined pattern, and the consultant is not assumed to possess the same level of expertise as the teacher in cognitive apprenticeship. Consulting is different from cooperative learning because it assumes some difference in skills and does not assume that individuals work together continuously (Kafai and Harel, 1991). Fifth grade students with LOGO programming experience might meet once a week with individual fourth grade LOGO programmers and attempt to help the less-experienced students solve problems. The exact nature of the interaction in any pair of experienced and inexperienced programmers is difficult to predict and would vary from week to week. There are many opportunities for using student consultants. We are presently helping students in a weekly Gifted and Talented Program to create hypermedia projects. These students are encouraged to demonstrate their projects back in their home classrooms and help their classmates create projects of their own.

Consulting and cooperative learning offer many similar benefits for learning and impose similar requirements for social skills. The consulting relationship is a bit different in that it places one student in an instructional role. Often, student consultants are attempting to help others work with skills that the consultants themselves have only marginally mastered. Consultation provides opportunities to revisit familiar material and move from a superficial level of knowledge to understanding. Explaining something to someone else, providing examples, and responding to questions requires a depth of understanding that students may not impose on themselves as learners. Even though the tasks they are helping other students with may be similar to what they were beginning to find boring last year, student consultants seem motivated by their role. Consultation creates an authentic context for continued learning and thinking. The consultant is now functioning in the culture of the teacher.

Kafai, Y. & Harel, I. (1991). Children learning through consulting. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.) Constructionism (pp. 111-140). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.