“What is ‘learning transfer’ and how does it help students?” – Today

(I am reposting a post from my favorite posts list. This post appeared in 2017. You can view all the posts here.)

I worked with Education Week to create an animated video on this topic, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

I’ve written extensively about transfer, including devoting a chapter to the subject in one of my books (see an excerpt from that chapter published by The Washington Post, The True Nature of Schooling: How to Teach Students to Apply Knowledge), and published a popular “best resources” list – The Best Resources for Learning the Concept of “Empathy” – to help me find more.

In my book, I praise the late Grant Wiggins for providing examples of how generalization can facilitate transfer. In his analysis of the women’s movement, he used this example of students learning about the qualities of a successful social movement. I also used this example in my video, but unfortunately didn’t give it any credit due to miscommunication. You can see links to several of his articles on the topic in my “Best Resources” list.

Here is the video: