Resisting Overzealous Transfer: Coordinating Previously Successful Routines With Needs for New Learning

Many approaches to instruction focus on helping people learn to recognize “the old in the new”—to turn what would otherwise be novel problems into familiar patterns that can be solved efficiently through the reuse of prior learning. Instruction that leads to efficient transfer is important, but it can also promote what we call “overzealous” transfer (OZT), where people focus primarily on seeing the old in the new because old routines have been successful before. As a result, OZT can hinder opportunities for new learning, and this can further diminish adaptive transfer later on. We relate OZT to “negative transfer,” provide experimental examples of OZT, discuss how a number of professions have developed procedures for avoiding OZT, argue that many common approaches to instruction and assessment may inadvertently produce OZT, and suggest some implications for future research.