Learning Transfer: The Missing Linkage to Effective Professional Development

Abstract

This case study illustrates the perspectives of leaders and teachers regarding professional development and learning transfer as they relate to school improvement. The case study is set in a Midwestern middle school that is representative of many other American schools. It encourages future administrators to participate in meaningful conversations about effective professional development and learning transfer. The hope is to better understand how school leaders can plan, assess, and follow up post professional development events using a Multidimensional Model of Learning Transfer (MMLT). The case poses questions designed to prepare educational leaders to provide effective professional development for their teachers.

Culture: The Link to Learning Transfer

“…As illustrated by Figure 1, pretraining includes the orientation of supervisors so that they can support the PL once it has begun. Pretraining also includes communicating expectations to facilitators and participants, explaining who will benefit from the PL event, stating that participants are accountable to implement new knowledge (Caffarella & Daffron, 2013; Yang et al, 2009), and sharing the schedule, goals, and information that are perceived as mandatory (Brion, 2020).…”

“…For the MMLT, the author refers to Culture with a capital letter as it includes individual, sectional, departmental, organizational, regional, and national cultures as well as cultures related to a continent. The author asserts that Culture is the predominant enhancer and inhibitor to transfer and that Culture affects the entire learning transfer phenomenon (Brion, 2020). Considering Culture as the main enhancer or inhibitor to transfer is innovative and useful because organizations worldwide spend large amounts of money and resources on PL, yet the money invested does not often yield the desired outcomes.…”

The difficulties of context: An exploratory study of learning transfer from a business simulation game

“…Thus, it appears the skills gap is real (Abbasi et al., 2018; Craig, 2019). If we assume that institutions of higher education exist to prepare students for future job opportunities, an assumption questioned by some (Munk, 2016), higher education should be seeking education modalities to close the skills gap (Brion, 2020; Jackson, 2013). Research identifies lack of learning transfer as the main cause of this skills gap (Rathelot, 2017; Tho, 2017).…”

“…Gick and Holyoak (1987) define learning transfer as a change in performance of a new task because of learning from a prior task. Ignoring the magnitude of the perception gap, both employees and employers expect some level of learning transfer to occur from the education process (Brion, 2020; Leberman et al., 2006). To better understand the reason for the skills gap, researchers developed learning transfer theory to explain how learning in one context is applied in a different context.…”

“…In learning transfer theory, context matters since actual business contexts differ from educational contexts. Recognition of the importance of the transfer problem has resulted in numerous studies that explore factors and strategies that affect learning transfer (Blume et al., 2010; Brion, 2020; Kodwani & Prashar, 2021).…”