Chapter 4: Consequential Transitions: A Sociocultural Expedition Beyond Transfer in Education

Abstract

I would normally avoid using a standard English dictionary definition to begin an intelligent conversation about almost anything, let alone introduce an entire chapter with one. However, our everyday use of the term transfer has a powerful metaphorical bearing on how we, as educators and social scientists who also happen to lead everyday lives, think about learning transfer. The American Heritage Dictionary (1976) defines transfer as follows.transfer (tr~tns-ffir', t r~s ' f e r ) v. -ferred, -ferring, -fers. --tr. 1. To convey or shift from one person or place to another. 2. To make over the possession or legal title of to another. 3. To convey (a drawing, pattern, mural, or design) from one surface to another. --i n t r . I. To move oneself, as from one location,job, or school to another. 2. To change from one airplane, bus, or other carrier to another.Transfer involves the movement of a person, a transaction, or an object from one place and time to another in our daily lives. As a construct in educational psychology, it refers to the appearance of a person carrying the product of learning from one task, problem, situation, or institution to another. It is here that the metaphor begins to break down. Transfer is distinguished from run-of-the-mill learning by virtue of its distinct tasks and situations, yet it does not include the genesis of tasks and situations as a part of the process. Transfer is necessarily a part of our moment-to-moment lives, yet seems difficult to study and even more difficult to foster intentionally. This irony is not lost on Shweder (1980), who notes that the "everyday mind accomplishes a very difficult task. It looks out at [the] behavioral world of complex, context-dependent interaction effects and insubstantial correlations among events, yet it perceives continuities, neat clusters, and simple regularities" (p. 77).However, the important educational issues and phenomena that underlie transfer do not dissipate with the metaphor or with irony. This chapter is an expedition 101

Using “Knowing That” and “Knowing How” to Inform Learning of Peripheral Vein Cannulation in Nursing Education

“…Nurse teachers who adopt such an "intelligent practice" to simulation-based PVC learning could have a considerable impact on students' development of PVC competence, both in the simulation and clinical setting. This is in line with Beach (1999), who argued that learning should take place in the learning context and then be transferred to and developed in an applied context.…”

Exploring nursing students’ transfer of peripheral venous cannulation from skills centre to the clinical setting

“…Transfer of learning is defined as the application of knowledge from one particular situation to another, [26] for instance, applying what you have learned in an educational or training setting to a clinical setting. [27] Two claims are made with respect to the transfer issue in psychological and educational literature.…”

“…All the students correctly assessed and selected a vein (7,27) in the category Assessment of a Vein. In the category Technical Implementation, four of the students traced the skin and all students inserted the cannula in a correct angle (26,29) while four students handled the cannula and stylet correctly (28,34). In the category Hygienic Principles, which included the largest number of steps, all students correctly performed steps concerning cleaning hands, glove use and disposal of the stylet in a sharps container (2,24,35,46,47).…”

Curriculum design through lesson study

“…It is boundary work that involves teachers as boundary crossers making sense of their daily routines of teaching in terms of researching the curriculum-in-action that has the potential to facilitate professional learning for participants. Indeed, in sociocultural terms, learning may be considered as being located in the changing relationships between an individual and the social activities in which they engage (Beach, 1999). A challenge, then, is to understand how we might best support learning at the boundaries of classroom and lesson study group -indeed, how we might design for effective boundary crossing.…”