Transfer as the POINT of Education
"I’m really disappointed with the performance, first of all - not with the attitude, but how much purpose we had and what determination we showed to change the game when it’s difficult to play against [them] and the way they play. [We needed] more drive, more hunger to win at any cost in every single action. We were not there at our level today." Premier League Manager after losing in the third round of the FA CUP 09/01/22
I’m a sports fan. In particular I enjoy football. As a supporter of one team, I’m hopeful every year that my club can improve and compete for trophies. For that to happen I often look to what is called the ‘Transfer Window’ with great expectation. This year the second window of the season to buy players is open throughout January. I’m hoping my team can ambitiously improve their player options, especially with some on-field leadership.
Fortunately, there is more than one type of transfer. Thus far this season, my team has done better than many predicted. Success on the pitch, however, has not been from newly acquired players, but largely from the existing young players who have worked through the club’s youth ranks. These under 21 players seem better at adjusting to the demands of their manager and have been able to react more effectively to each opponent they face. The defense is still vulnerable and goals can be hard to find, but the team, as a whole, have transferred their manager’s strong work ethic, (in most games), and a positive attacking formation into success on the pitch and in their overall league position.
Application of the skills taught on the training ground to a game situation is what any team manager would expect. There is no point in doing drills if the team can only react to an opponent if they line up and play exactly as rehearsed in practice.
In education we also value the ability of our students to apply their learning, especially to novel situations. Grant Wiggins, an advocate for Authentic Education, described Transfer as the aim of education. “The point of school is not to get good at school but to effectively parlay what we learned in school in other learning and in life.”
In our class lessons teachers are aware that transfer doesn’t occur just because content is covered. A perfect score on a worksheet about personification doesn’t demonstrate understanding of the value/impact, particularly for empathy, of this literary device. We need to provide opportunities for application to occur if we want our students to demonstrate authentic transfer.
The following is an example of personification used when second graders read 'The Owl Tree' by Jenny Nimmo. The author creates human ‘emotions’ within a tree to foreshadow important story developments.
“All at once the tree shivered violently, tossing a cloud of tiny birds into the air. And Joe knew that the owl-tree was afraid of Mr Rock.”
Students can only prove their understanding of a topic like personification, if they are given opportunities to use their learning in different and often unfamiliar tasks. Personification is best understood, and indeed assessed, if learners have to complete assignments that challenge them to make sense of past learning in unfamiliar tasks.
As a best practice school our goal is not to simply ask students to learn stuff and then be tested on that learning. Rather as Wiggins explains, “Assumptions about transfer accompany the belief that it is better to broadly ‘educate’ people than simply ‘train’ them to perform particular tasks.”
As parents when your child comes home to share a piece of individual learning try to challenge him/her by creating new and unfamiliar scenarios/tasks to see if the learning has been transferred. Oh, and don’t forget that a good attitude is not enough, determination to apply knowledge is hard and often requires stretching ourselves into unfamiliar areas and persevering in the face of initial failure.
Don Newbury
Elementary Principal
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