Fostering Transfer of Knowledge in Education Settings

Fostering Transfer of Knowledge in Education Settings Moderator: Elizabeth Albro (elizabeth.albro@ed.gov) Institute of Education Sciences, U. S. Department of Education Washington, DC 20208 David Uttal (duttal@northwestern.edu) Bethany Rittle-Johnson (bethany.rittle-johnson@vanderbilt.edu) Departments of Psychology & Education Northwestern University, Evanston IL 60208 Psychology and Human Development Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203 Judy DeLoache (jdeloache@virginia.edu) Department of Psychology University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904 Jon Star (jonstar@msu.edu) Harvard Graduate School of Education Cambridge, MA 02138 Jennifer A. Kaminski (kaminski.16@osu.edu) 1 Vladimir M. Sloutsky (VSloutsky@hec.ohio-state.edu) 1 Andrew F. Heckler (heckler@mps.ohio-state.edu) 2 Robert Goldstone (rgoldsto@indiana.edu) Ji Son (jys@indiana.edu) Center for Cognitive Science, 2 Department of Physics Ohio State University, Columbus OH 43210 Department of Psychology, Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 Keywords: Education, Transfer, Mathematics, Science How do students use what they learn in one context and apply it to another? The issue of transfer of learning is one of the most central topics in both cognitive science and education. This symposium brings together cognitive scientists, developmental psychologists, and education researchers who will discuss the question of transfer in the lab and in the real-world context of education. This set of talks examines transfer across learning contexts (computer simulation or classroom), across ages from preschool to college, and across content domains (science and math). The symposium will provide valuable insight as to what conditions facilitate transfer and what conditions impede transfer. Elizabeth Albro is the moderator for this panel and she will facilitate discussion of these issues throughout the symposium. Rethinking the Concrete-Abstract Distinction in Early Cognitive Development and Education Many researchers have suggested that young children’s thinking is inherently concrete. According to this view, young children learn about the world through direct exploration, rather than from abstract, symbolic representations. Although this characterization of children’s thinking has been challenged (e.g, Simons & Keil, 1995), it continues to influence the design of educational curricula and materials. Young children are often encouraged to play with concrete letters, numbers, or mathematics manipulatives, based in part on the assumption that they will acquire the symbolic representation of letter or number best through the manipulation of concrete materials. Our research has been exploring the validity of this assumption in a variety of domains. We (Uttal & DeLoache) are testing under what conditions the use of concrete objects facilitates the development of literacy and mathematical thinking. We have found that a critical transition involves learning to think beyond the concrete properties of the objects. For example, we have asked 3-year-olds to play with concrete numbers or shapes. Children who had high levels of number knowledge played less with the objects as toys. Likewise, playing with concrete letters actually made it harder for children to think of the letters as representations. We interpret our results in terms of DeLoache’s (2000) dual representation hypothesis. Playing with objects that are later intended to be symbols may actually be counterproductive; it focuses children’s attention on the concrete properties of objects rather than on what they are intended to represent. Although concrete objects may indeed be appealing to young children, children must eventually learn to look past the concrete properties of the objects to the intended representations. Educators must balance the advantages of using concrete objects with the possible disadvantages. The Role of Concreteness in Learning and Transfer of Abstract Concepts How do people acquire abstract concepts that afford an unlimited number of instantiations sharing little or no surface similarity? The same mathematical concept can describe situations as superficially diverse as the metabolism of medication in the body and the temperature of cooling cup of coffee. How is knowledge of one instantiation transferred to a novel analogous situation? We (Kaminski, Sloutsky, & Heckler) argue that surface features may play an important part in this process: while concrete, contextualized, and perceptually-rich surface