Transfer

With the theary of the "Transfer" of "Transfer of Learning", it is proposed that learning in one situation can commonly be applied in another situation similar to the first with varying levels of automaticity or deliberation.  There are two ways to describe this transfer, "Near/Far" and "Low Road/High Road".

 

"Near" learning can be compared to learning to tie one's shoe with brown laces and then being able to later tie shoes with white laces with no difficulty.  The learning from the first situation transfers nearly automaticaly from the first situation to the second.  "Far" learning is when the comparison is not so easy to make.  At this site, the example of the metric system is given.  A math teacher may teach the metric system to a group of students and feel confident in their ability.  However, when the same students arrive in their science class, they are unable to transfer their knowledge of the metric system from the context of math to science.  One of the problems with this version is that it is difficult to come up with a plan of action to help those students transfer the learning.  Either they do or they don't.

 

"Low Road/High Road" transfer describes how their are two different processes of transferring learning.  Cited from this site, "Low-road transfer refers to developing some knowledge/skill to a high level of automaticity. It usually requires a great deal of practice in varying settings. Shoe tying, keyboarding, steering a car, and single-digit arithmetic facts are examples of areas in which such automaticity can be achieved and is quite useful."   It might be characterized by words such as automatic, reflexive, intuitive, etc.

 

Cited from this site, "High-road transfer involves: cognitive understanding; purposeful and conscious analysis; mindfulness; and application of strategies that cut across disciplines. In high-road transfer, there is deliberate mindful abstraction of an idea that can transfer, and then conscious and deliberate application of the idea when faced by a problem where the idea may be useful."  High Road transfer can be characterized by words such as abstraction, connections, mindful, deliberate, search, etc.