Rethinking transfer: A simple proposal with multiple implica-tions

9720384). We greatly appreciate their support but emphasize that the views expressed herein are those of the authors and not of the granting agency. We are very grateful to Carl Bereiter, Asghar (Ali) Iran-Nejad, and David Pearson for excellent comments and suggestions. In addition, we thank our colleagues Kay Burgess, Xiadong Lin, and Sean Brophy for graciously allowing us to discuss some of their yet-to-be-published data. We also thank the members of the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt who provided invaluable feedback on our work. A belief in transfer lies at the heart of our educational system. Most educators want learning activities to have positive effects that extend beyond the exact conditions of initial learning. They are hopeful that students will show evidence of transfer in a variety of situations; for example, from one problem to another within a course; from one course to another; from one school year to the next; and from their years in school to their years in the workplace. Beliefs about transfer often accompany the claim that it is better to " educate " people broadly than simply " train " them to perform particular tasks (e.g., Broudy, 1977). In this chapter, we discuss research on transfer from both a retrospective and prospective perspective. What has past transfer research taught us that is especially important for education? What might research on transfer look like in the future? Our discussion of past research will be brief-not because it is unimportant but because of space limitations and the fact that our primary emphasis is on the future. We argue that prevailing theories and methods of measuring transfer are limited in scope; we propose an alternative that complements and extends current approaches, and we sketch its implications for education. Our discussion is organized into five sections. First, we briefly summarize some of the key findings from the literature on transfer-both the successes and the disappointments. Second, we contrast the " traditional " view of transfer with an alternative that emphasizes the ability to learn during transfer. Third, we discuss mechanisms for transfer that emphasize Broudy's analysis of " knowing with " (which he adds to the more familiar replicative " knowing that " and applicative " knowing how "). Fourth, we show how our alternate view of transfer affects assumptions about what is valuable for students to learn. Finally, we show how our view encourages a dynamic …