Teaching for Transfer: Theory and Practice

1. Teaching for Transfer: Theory and Practice Adrienne Jankens & Thomas Trimble 2013 Fall Orientation

2. Transfer Defined • “The ability to extend what one has learned in one context to new contexts” (Bransford, 1996). • “Preparation for future learning” (Bransford and Schwarz, 1999)

3. Basic Concepts • Low-road transfer (car to truck) • Automatic, stimulus-driven • High-road transfer • Mindful, deliberate • Near transfer- from one context to another similar context • from algebra to geometry • Far transfer- from one context to a seemingly unrelated context • from algebra to cooking • Negative transfer-when experience in one context hurts performance in another • from soccer to basketball

4. Characteristics of Learning and Transfer (Bransford) • Initial learning is necessary for transfer • New learning involves transfer based on previous learning • Transfer is best viewed as a dynamic, active process • Transfer is not a unitary process-different routes to transfer

5. Factors that impact transfer • Abstraction-transfer is enhanced by instruction that helps students reconstruct problems at higher levels of abstraction • Abstraction builds bridges between different contexts • Learner-generated abstractions promote transfer better than instructor-supplied abstractions • Transfer is difficult when knowledge is over-contextualized (only taught in one highly specific context) • Prompting • Helping students see the potential for transfer in other settings and contexts • Reflection (metacognition) • Self-monitoring

6. Engaging and Recontextualizing Prior Knowledge • Rounsaville, Goldberg, and Bawarshi (2008): Prompting and encouraging students to reflect on what prior knowledge is influencing their approaches to new writing tasks is key for their development of metacognition • Reiff and Bawarshi (2011): “Boundary crossing” and “boundary guarding” • Nowacek (2011); Rounsaville (2012): Students work through a negotiation between prior knowledge and present task • Roberston, Taczak, and Yancey (2012): “remixing,” “assemblage,” and “critical incidents”

7. Discussion • Reflection as a genre? • The vocabulary of reflection?

8. Teaching for Transfer: Practice Adrienne Jankens & Thomas Trimble 2013 Fall Orientation

9. Goals • Provide activities that promote high-road transfer across writing contexts (both near and far) • Forward-reaching—preparing for future tasks • Backward-reaching—approaching current tasks using learning from past experiences

10. Scaffolding and Sequencing • Help students learn to write reflection • Use reflection to support the development of other writing projects • Build reflective activities to lead effectively to the final reflective text: the reflective argument essay

11. Tools • Engaging Prior Knowledge: KWL (Ogle)

12. Tools Thomas • Journal Prompts • Describe a time when an argument changed your mind. • Describe a time when you encountered a writing task that you did not know how to complete. What did you do? • What was the most difficult part of this assignment? How did you deal with that difficulty? • What part of this assignment is still fuzzy?

13. Tools • In-Process Reflections: tuning-in journal, talk-backs

14. Tools Thomas • Letter to the Reader (from Sandra Giles’s article “Reflective Thinking and the Revision Process”)

15. Tools • Tying to Course Learning Outcomes: strategies for making them accessible • Clear identification on schedule • Discussion of terms (via KWL) • Midterm practice

16. Tools Thomas • Outcomes Memo

17. Discussion

18. Resources • 1020 Teaching Resource Site • Bransford and Schwartz. “Rethinking Transfer: A Simple Proposal With Multiple Implications.” Review of Research in Education. 24.1, Jan. 1999: 61-100. Web. • Giles, Sandra. “Reflective Thinking and the Revision Process.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 1 Ed. Charles Lowe and PavelZemliansky. • “Learning and Transfer.” How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Eds. John D. Bransfordet al. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000. 51-78. • Perkins, D.N. and Gavriel Salomon. “Rocky Road to Transfer: Rethinking Mechanisms of a Neglected Phenomenon.” Educational Psychologist 24.2 (1989): 113-142.

19. Resources • Nowacek, Rebecca. Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011. Print. • Reiff, Mary Jo and AnisBawarshi. “Tracing Discursive Resources: How Students Use Prior Genre Knowledge to Negotiate New Writing Contexts in First-Year Composition.” Written Communication. 28.3. 2011. Web. • Roberston, Liane, Kara Taczak, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. “Notes toward a Theory of Prior Knowledge and Its Role in College Composers’ Transfer of Knowledge and Practice.” Composition Forum. 26. Fall 2012. Web. • Rounsaville, Angela, Rachel Goldberg, and AnisBawarshi. “From Incomes to Outcomes: FYW Students’ Prior Genre Knowledge, Meta-Cognition, and the Question of Transfer.” WPA. 32.1. Fall/Winter 2008. Web. • Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Reflection in the Writing Classroom. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1998. Print.