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

Abstract

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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants SMA-0835854, DRL-1020362, and IIS-0904324. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We thank the infinite patience of our editors and Beth Strehlo.

Notes

We do not mean to use the term overzealous to connote an affective component of transfer. For instance, we are not claiming that students are transferring with a strong sense of passion.

A reasonable question is whether it would work to have students complete T&P and then invent afterward. Although it remains to be tested, our speculation is that they would just apply the formulas they had been taught without finding the deep structure of the ratios. It would be difficult for students to forget what they had just learned to only come up with the exact same answer through inventing. If the problems were masked so that students did not know they were finding density or speed, then they would be inventing again rather than reusing what they already knew, and we would expect them to show the benefits of avoiding the zealous application of division.