Chapter 3: Rethinking Transfer: A Simple Proposal With Multiple Implications

A belief in transfer lies at the heart of our educational system. Most educators want learning activities to have positive effects that extend beyond the exact conditions of initial learning. They are hopeful that students will show evidence of transfer in a variety of situations: from one problem to another within a course, from one course to another, from one school year to the next, and from their years in school to their years in the workplace. Beliefs about transfer often accompany the claim that it is better to educate people broadly than simply to train them to perform particular tasks (e.g., Broudy, 1977). In this chapter, we discuss research on transfer from both a retrospective and a prospective perspective. What has past transfer research taught us that is especially important for education? What might research on transfer look like in the future? Our discussion of past research is brief, not because it is unimportant but because of space limitations and the fact that our primary emphasis is on the future. We argue that prevailing theories and methods of measuring transfer are limited in scope; we propose an alternative that complements and extends current approaches; and we sketch this alternatives implications for education. Our discussion is organized into five sections. First, we briefly summarize some of the key findings from the literature on transfer—both the successes and the disappointments. Second, we contrast the traditional view of transfer with an alternative that emphasizes the ability to learn during transfer. Third, we discuss mechanisms for transfer that emphasize Broudys analysis of knowing with (which he adds to the more familiar replicative knowing that and applicative knowing how). Fourth, we show how our alternate view of transfer affects assumptions about what is valuable for students to learn. Finally, we show Funding for studies described in this chapter was provided by grants from the Office of Educational