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TAKING FIRST STEPS TO UNDERSTAND TRANSFER OF SCIENTIFIC ABILITIES This study investigates internalization and transfer of scientific abilities by students enrolled in an introductory physics course at a North Eastern state university The abilities include designing investigations to test hypotheses, representing ideas in multiple ways, and communicating these ideas
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This article is a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment. Several studies show firm evidence that innovations designed to strengthen the frequent feedback that students receive about their learning yield substantial learning gains. The perceptions of students and their role in self‐assessment are considered alongside analysis of the strategies used by teachers and the formative strategies incorporated in such systemic approaches as mastery learning. There follows a more detailed and theoretical analysis of the nature of feedback, which provides a basis for a discussion of the development of theoretical models for formative assessment and of the prospects for the improvement of practice.
Five experiments investigated transfer from multiple analogs to a superficially dissimilar target problem. When subjects explicitly compared the analogs and then immediately attempted to solve the target problem in the context of a single experiment, transfer was obtained with significant frequency even without a hint that the analogs and target were related. Prehint transfer was sharply reduced or eliminated when the source analogs and the target were presented in different contexts, even when the transfer test was immediate. However, prehint transfer was enhanced, even after a context shift and a week-long delay between reading the source analogs and solving the problem, when the following conditions were met: The target problem was reworded slightly to emphasize a structural feature that it shared with the analogs; three rather than two source analogs were provided; and detailed, schema-oriented questions were used to help subjects focus on the problem-relevant aspects of the stories. Although spontaneous transfer between small numbers of dissimilar analogs is difficult to obtain, it can be achieved by manipulations that foster abstraction of a problem schema from the training examples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Despite a century's worth of research, arguments surrounding the question of whether far transfer occurs have made little progress toward resolution. The authors argue the reason for this confusion is a failure to specify various dimensions along which transfer can occur, resulting in comparisons of "apples and oranges." They provide a framework that describes 9 relevant dimensions and show that the literature can productively be classified along these dimensions, with each study situated at the intersection of various dimensions. Estimation of a single effect size for far transfer is misguided in view of this complexity. The past 100 years of research shows that evidence for transfer under some conditions is substantial, but critical conditions for many key questions are untested.
this article should be addressed to Dedre Gentner, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208. E-mail: gentner@northwestern.edu Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2003, Vol. 95, No. 2, 393--408 0022-0663/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.95.2.393 393 plified the same probability principle (i.e., their structure was the same). Gentner, Rattermann, and Forbus (1993) found similar results in an investigation of how people remember prose passages (brief stories about, for example, a hunter shooting a hawk). They asked participants to read stories in an initial session and then, a week later, to read new stories and write down any initial stories that they were reminded of while reading the new stories. As in Ross's (1984) study, remindings that bore surface similarities (i.e., another story about a hunter) far outnumbered remindings that were structurally similar (i.e., another story about attacking). Gentner and colleagues took the research a step further and asked the participants to judge the quality of the match (i.e., whether one could profitably be used to draw inferences about the other) between pairs of the same stories. Structurally similar pairs were judged to be of higher quality than the surface-similar pairs, thus showing a very different pattern from their actual remindings. If people are directly comparing two examples, they probably can appreciate structural similarities, but if they are presented with just one example, they are far more likely to recall a prior example on the basis of surface similarities than structural similarities
This paper, presented at the 2001 Physics Education Research Conference, asks if reading fifteen textbook chapters, listening to one lecturer, doing prescribed labs, answering someone else's questions, and solving well-defined problems resemble in any way a five-month schedule of activities for a person in a science related field in the 21st century workplace? Several recent studies concerning the knowledge and skills needed in the workplace indicate that there is a serious mismatch between traditional physics instruction and the needs of the workplace. Therefore, in this study, the authors describe briefly an Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) introductory physics learning system that attempts to replicate more closely the processes used in the real world of science and engineering. The authors hope that ISLE students' learning better meets the needs of the workplace. The paper describes the method, including goals of the instruction, techniques used to assess the achievement of these goals and preliminary results of this assessment from courses taught by different instructors.
: The purpose of this paper is to synthesize literature related to
apprenticeship learning, the sociology of science, and K-12 science
education to develop a set of characteristics for designing/evaluating
participatory science learning experiences. Following this discussion,
we further clarify and illuminate the value of these characteristics for
science educators by using them as evaluative criteria for
characterizing the experiences of 24 middle school learners who embarked
on a 2-week long camp with real scientists engaged in real research. We
also describe how middle school science teachers supported both
reflection-in-practice and reflection-on-practice during the camp, and
how an electronic notebook was also leveraged to support both types of
reflection. Implications of these characteristics for science education
more generally are discussed.
An analysis of the process of analogical thinking predicts that analogies will be noticed on the basis of semantic retrieval cues and that the induction of a general schema from concrete analogs will facilitate analogical transfer. These predictions were tested in experiments in which subjects first read one or more stories illustrating problems and their solutions and then attempted to solve a disparate but analogous transfer problem. The studies in Part I attempted to foster the abstraction of a problem schema from a single story analog by means of summarization instructions, a verbal statement of the underlying principle, or a diagrammatic representation of it. None of these devices achieved a notable degree of sucess. In contrast, the experiments in Part II demonstrated that if two prior analogs were given, subjects often derived a problem schema as an incidental product of describing the similarities of the analogs. The quality of the induced schema was highly predictive of subsequent transfer performance. Furthermore, the verbal statements and diagrams that had failed to facilitate transfer from one analog proved highly beneficial when paired with two. The function of examples in learning was discussed in light of the present study.
In this American Institute of Physics report, three questions are addressed: 1) What are the goals of undergraduate physics curriculum? 2) What are the common career paths of physics bachelors? 3) How well does the physics curriculum prepare our bachelors for these careers? The paper suggests that physics curricula 1) provide students with a knowledge of physics, 2) provide students with a set of skills that are important in a good physicist, and 3) provide students with educational experiences that develop the traits important in a good scientist. Data are presented on the career choices of physics degree recipients. Physics graduates pursue a variety of careers in today's job marketplace. They value skills acquired through study of physics, however job skills valued in the job market are not part of the curriculum. According to data, about a third of physics graduates enter the labor force with only a bachelor's degree. Over a third pursue master's degrees, and about one quarter receive Ph.Ds. Six tables and three figures are included, and present data on career choice, important skills, and work environment, and provide information on the link between physics education and career. (HB)
This paper reports on two experiments in which high-performing university students having finished an introductory physics course were asked to pose mechanics problems. In Experiment 1, subjects were given problem situations (i.e., a story line accompanied with a diagram from which problems could be constructed) and asked to generate “textbook-like” problems that could be solved with specified concepts (e.g., conservation of mechanical energy, Newton's Second Law). In Experiment 2, subjects were given Concept Scenarios (i.e., a description of the principles and concepts that apply to a problem and the order in which they apply) and asked to generate problems that matched the scenarios. Interviews conducted immediately following the experiment asked subjects to explain how the problems posed matched either the specified concepts, or the Concept Scenarios. Findings indicate that, when followed by an interview, problem posing is a powerful assessment tool for probing students' understanding of physics concepts, as well as their ability to transfer their knowledge to novel contexts. In many instances, students posed appropriate, solvable problems, yet displayed major flaws in conceptual understanding. This suggests that even good novices are lacking in the way their conceptual knowledge is organized in memory and linked to problem contexts and procedures. Suggestions for using problem posing as a pedagogical tool are presented.
In this paper we report two studies in which elementary-school children learned a complex computer-programming skill—how to debug LOGO graphics and list-processing programs—and then transferred the high-level goal structure of that skill to nonprogramming domains. Instruction, its assessment, and the transfer tasks were all derived from an explicit model of the debugging process, cast as a computer simulation. Debugging skills were acquired over a period of several months as part of a LOGO programming course; the transfer tasks involved correcting written instructions in a variety of domains, including arranging items, allocating resources, and following map routes. Students showed clear improvement in the transfer tasks following instruction in debugging programs, and in the second study, amount of transfer was correlated with the degree of debugging skill acquisition. Our results contrast with many earlier studies that found little transfer of problem-solving skills in general and of high-level programming skills in particular. We suggest that the key to the success of our procedure is the fact that we used an extremely precise computer simulation model of the skills required to debug LOGO graphics and list-processing programs as a concrete manifestation of the notion of “cognitive objectives”.
Recent findings of transfer and nontransfer in such areas as planning and problem management skills, computer programming instruction, and literacy-related cognitive skills reveal paradoxes that invite explanation. In this article, we separate the "how" of transfer—the mechanisms that lead to it—from the "what" of transfer—the kind of knowledge and skill that might get transferred. We argue that transfer occurs in two ways. Low-road transfer depends on extensive, varied practice and occurs by the automatic triggering of well-learned behavior in a new context. High-road transfer occurs by intentional mindful abstraction of something from one context and application in a new context. Such transfer can either be of the forward-reaching kind, whereby one mindfully abstracts basic elements in anticipation for later application, or of the backward-reaching kind, where one faces a new situation and deliberately searches for relevant knowledge already acquired. Findings of transfer or nontransfer reflect whether the conditions for either low-road or high-road transfer were met. Qualitative predictions stemming from this theory of the mechanisms of transfer are offered and discussed.
Review of Research in Education Overcoming contextual limitations on problem solving transfer
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The Changing Role of Physics Departments in Modern Universities The case for the prosecution: Transfer as an epiphenomenon
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Transfer on Trial: Intelligence Investigative Science Learning Environment: Using the processes of science and cognitive strategies to learn physics
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