TIPS
FOR TEACHERS
Increasing Students’ Academic and Social
Success: Proven Tactics for Helping Students Transfer
Information
Nature
of the Tactics
Transfer
of training happens when students are able to use what they learn in the
classroom in otherreal-life situations. Positive transfer occurs when the
student can recognize the similarities between the classroom learning context
and other contexts, and therefore, can use school-learned skills in other
settings. Negative transfer occurs when the student's experience in the
classroom is so different from other contexts that she cannot see how her
school-based learning can be used in other settings.
Tactics
to increase the transfer of training among students refers to methods that
influence all types of learning: concept learning, discrimination learning,
verbal learning, motor learning, problem solving, and dealing with connected
discourse. The following tactics have been researched repeatedly
over the past century and the effectiveness of their results is well-documented.
Tactics
to Increase Transfer of Training Among Students
• Degree of Original Learning
• Similarity Relations
• Instructions to Transfer
Degree
of Original Learning
Original
learning refers to the extent to which a student has mastered a unit of
study during the initial, or acquisition, stage of learning. Assume
that we defined initial mastery as the first occasion on which the student
achieved 100% on a test of the unit of study. If the teacher moves
on to another unit of study following the occasion of the student's initial
mastery, many such students will be unable to use much of the content of
that unit of study in the real world outside the classroom. One of the
best tactics to enhance transfer of training is over learning. Over
learning refers to
practice
beyond the point of initial mastery. For instance, if the student achieved
initial mastery following the 10th session of original learning, we could
practice half again as long as it took to reach initial mastery (i.e.,
five additional sessions, or 150% over learning). Or, we could practice
for ten additional sessions following initial mastery (i.e., 200% over
learning). The degree of over learning has an crucial influence on the
transfer of previously learned material. As the student becomes more
intimately familiar with and proficient at performing a skill, it becomes
easier to recognize circumstances in which the skill is called for outside
the classroom. Over learning should always implemented to at least the
150% level. On the other hand, research shows that over learning
beyond the 200% level costs more in time and effort than it benefits transfer.
Similarity
Relations
Transfer
occurs when there is a similarity between the situation in which the original
learning took place and some real-world situation. The teacher can enhance
transfer of training by making the classroom learning experience as similar
to various real-world contexts as possible. For instance, teachers
can dispense $10,000 in pretend money to each student to invest in the
stock market. Students can then follow the performance of their stocks
through the newspaper or internet, learning a number of practical skills
that will be easier to transfer than a textbook unit on financial investment.
Another way that teachers can increase positive transfer is to take his
students into the real-world with the specific intent to test their transfer
of skills that were learned in the classroom.
Such
real-world excursions may involve comparison-shopping, social comportment,
finding specific locations in large buildings, etc. A final tactic
for increasing transfer of training is to change elements of the school-based
learning to prepare the student for the kinds of changes that will occur
outside the school. For instance, the teacher may require the student
to perform the skill in the lunchroom or during physical education.
She may ask another teacher to require the student to perform the skill.
Finally, the teacher can change the way he makes requests for the student
to
perform
(e.g., "How many 5s in 20?" versus "20 divided by 5 equals what?").
Instructions
to Transfer
Some
students do not automatically recognize that information learned in school
can be used in contexts outside the school. Instructions to transfer
refers to explicit directions to the student to apply skills learned in
school to other situations. In effect, the student who asks, "Why
do I have to learn this?," is asking how the knowledge or skill can be
used to his advantage outside of school. Instructions to transfer are teacher
attempts to help the student see the connection between the acquisition
of information and skills in the classroom and their use in the world outside
the
classroom.
Just as students learn best when they learn intentionally, they also transfer
information and skills better when they are explicitly instructed to do
so.
........................................................................................................................................
One
of a series of documents prepared by Auburn University special education
faculty
as
contracted by the Alabama State Improvement Grant to promote positive change
in the public schools.
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