The rediscovery of the active learner in adaptive contexts: A developmental-historical analysis..

Abstract

A reexamination of Thorndike and Woodworth's (1901a) connectionist conception of ransfer as dependent on identical elements between the training and transfer situations shows that this view was developed as a reaction to a formal discipline approach to pedagogy, not as an attempt to introduce positivism into the transfer literature. Transfer was conceived as a highly cognitive process, quite sensitive to the context in which it was taking place. Hence, Thorndike and Woodworth agreed more with the Gestaltists on the role of relationship among elements in transfer than has heretofore been recognized. Moreover, this historical battle still underlies more recent cognitive and sociocultural approaches to transfer of training. This article also reviews current work on transfer, from new uses of identical elements in cognitive science, to metacognitive and metamemory emphases on active assessment of context. In contrast, the sociogenetic approach, following the ideas of Vygotsky, carries holistic Gestaltist notions of cognition to the cultural construction of meaning, and calls into question the existence of any isolated set of procedures for transfer.