Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High
"As learners move through these liminal stages, their knowledge also becomes less tacit
and more explicit, discursive, and conscious, at least for a time—they not only know
what they know, but they are also more likely to recognize how they know it. This
development of metacognitive awareness is an important step toward “high road transfer”
(Perkins and Solomon), which “depends on deliberate, mindful abstraction of skill or
knowledge from one context for application to another” (The Value of Troublesome pg
3) Definition of High road transfer
“…high-road (or mindful) transfer involving knowledge abstracted and applied to another
context…” (Notes toward)Definition of HRT
Active transfer can only occur during high road transfer (Notes toward)
“In general, however, our field has not deeply theorized transfer much beyond what
David Perkins and Gavriel Salomon offered (near and far, high and low), or even much
beyond the term “transfer,” which we have problematized but continue to use (Wardle).”
(creative repurposing) We are still far away from a better understanding of transfer
Low
“… low-road (or reflexive) transfer involving knowledge triggered by something similar
in another context…” (Notes toward) Definition of LRT
Deep level
“I end by suggesting that the steady movement toward standardized testing and tight
control of educational activities by legislators is producing and reproducing answergetting dispositions in educational systems and individuals and that this movement is
more than a dislike for the messiness of deep learning; rather, it can be understood as an
attempt to limit the kind of thinking that students and citizens have the tools to do.”
(Creative Repurposing) “From this perspective, then, the attempt to remove problemexploring and ill-structured problems from school settings is not simply an aversion to
the messiness of deep learning and problem solving but an attempt to limit the kinds of
thinking that students and citizens can do. When people have the language and the
disposition to explore problems critically, they are dangerous to the dominant and
authorized order. Bourdieu reminds us of John-Paul Sartre’s comment: “Words wreak
havoc when they find a name for what had up to then been lived namelessly” (qtd. in
Outline 170).” (Creative Repurposing) Is it being done intentionally, though?
“Why don’t our educational systems display and encourage problem-exploring
dispositions? Why are we tacking so hard and so fast toward shallow educational systems
that encourage and embody answer-getting dispositions? Why is the answer-getting
system so much more attractive and prevalent? Maybe because problem exploring is
messy and unpredictable, while answer-seeking maps onto our desires for efficiency and
quantifiable predictability. Deep learning isn’t efficient or easy, and it doesn’t happen on
a predictable, quantifiable schedule.” (Creative Repurposing) This is why we don’t
encourage it. It’s messy learning.
Forward-reaching
"...forward searching (examining what you have already accomplished to see how to extend it
forward)..." (Genre and Cogn, pg 285) one of four cognitive mechanism when we learn
Backward-reaching
" ...backward searching to elaborate and organize the text to be comprehensible for others (Genre
and Cogn, pg 285) one of four cognitive mechanism when we learn
“…we theorize that what students bring with them to college, by way of prior
knowledge, is a passport that functions as something of a guide. As important, when
students use the guide to reflect back rather than to cast forward, it tends to replicate the
past rather than to guide for the future, and in that sense, Reynolds’s observations about
many students replicating the old in the new are astute.” (Notes toward) Prior
knowledge should be used to guide the future instead of simply inserting new situations
into old knowledge.
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory"
"Psychologists, educational researchers, and writing theorists have pursued Vygotsky’s
association of cognitive development with children learning cultural tools to regulate their
activities and thoughts." consideration when writing made by children" (Genre and pg 282)
"Activity Theory (CHAT)"
"Rhetorical Genre Theory"
" Discipline and genre specific applications have continued to flourish as teachers have found
them useful to foster discipline specific learning and thought development (Bazerman et al.,
2005). Boscolo and Mason (2001), in a particularly interesting study, pro- vide evidence of how
engagement with writing deepens conceptual understanding within subject matter and which
transfers to other subject areas." (Genre and pg 280) Genre theory has gained ground.
" genre-related hypotheses, focusing on how genres require the writer to search for and organize
knowledge, to link ideas, to structure rela- tionships with audiences, and to create stances toward
material; " (Genre and pg 280)
"[Klein] finds some evidence for each, but generally finds them under-investigated, with genre
hypotheses being the most tested and supported to that date. I point out that the genre distinctions
in that literature, which I have also reviewed above, are rather general and form based. They are
not tied to activities beyond generalized classroom practice—such as journals, study questions,
and essays. The effects seem to be associated with the specific nature of tasks, with study
questions leading to increased recall and essays associated with connecting ideas (see also
Newell, 2006; McCutcheon, 2007). This pattern is reminiscent of Scribner and Cole’s (1981)
finding that the cognitive effects of literacy were varied and tied to the institutionally embedded
practices which literacy was used for. Looking at cognitive practices in different forms of writing
means considering writing processes as multiple and varied, depending not just on personal
characteristics of the writer but on the genre, situation, and social activity system within which
the writing is taking place and which support the writing in various ways. (Genre and pg 281)
"I would point out, further, that the specific situations and associated genres would influence
planning, structuring, reviewing, and audience accommodation, so that perception of a situation
and a genre decision might affect them all. .. Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson (2004) in a
metanalysis of 48 WTL studies noted small but significant genre effects on writing to learn, as
measured by conventional measures of academic achievement at all levels of education from
elementary to higher education, with the exception of grades 6-8 where writing to learn tasks had
a cumulative negative effect size." (Genre and Cog pg 281) Genre study increased the learning
in most cases.
" I leave as open questions. The point here is that learning concrete literate practices within the
context of the genres of grammatical instruction—including rules, exercises, and diagrams—at
first seems to have no transfer value into functional use in writing and revision. Later, however,
these integrate with the meaning making aspects of writing to create a new functional system of
writing. We may also say something similar happens with reflective understanding of other levels
of composing, such as text structuring devices, genre expectations, audience and situation
concerns, and activity consequences within larger social systems." (Genre and Cog pg 287) It
may not be apparent right away but studying genre has lasting effect
" Although they have learned the genres of their profession and are successful in them, their
reflective ability to manipulate them is limited because of a lack of linguistic and rhetorical
vocabulary and analytical methods." (Genre and Cogn pg 288) Genre can not stand alone when
teaching writing.
"The emergence of differentiated written genres within differentiated activity systems have
shaped the practices of knowledge, thought, and reasoning in the world since the introduction of
literacy five thousand years ago" (Genre and Cog pg 288-289) Genres are a growing entity and
each time we enter a new discourse community we have the opportunity to learn a new one.
In all these instances, whatever the level of cognitive activity required, genres identify a problem
space for the developing writer to work in as well as provide the form of the solution the writer
seeks and particular tools useful in the solution." (Genre and Cog last paragraph) Genre study
affords the learner a new tool to learn and solve problems.
“Genre teaching can indeed be formulaic and constraining,
if genres are taught as forms without social or cultural meaning. Genre teaching
can also be enlightening and freeing, if genres are taught as part of a larger critical
awareness.” (Teaching critical pg 337) It can be good or bad.
“To teach a particular genre is to teach that genre’s context.
On the good side, that means we teach genres as rhetorical, with conventions
that have rhetorical purpose and that can be used to achieve rhetorical
aims in rhetorical situations.” (Teaching critical pg 338)
“No one, no matter how knowledgeable, Freedman argued, can possibly articulate
for novices all the expectations and fine details that mark the texts of experienced
genre users. I can teach students about colon titles on academic papers,
for example, but I can’t teach them exactly which ones will be successful and
which fall flat.” (Teaching critical )
“All three pedagogical uses of genre theory— explicitly teaching particular genres,
teaching antecedent genres, and teaching critical genre awareness—can work together to
develop a theoretically sound genre pedagogy that can contribute to our writing
assignments or structure our writing courses.” (Teaching Critical)
“Finally, genres can be quite resistant to change, as institutions and cultures can resist
change.” (Teaching Critical 344)
“…in the case of one student, that students’ prior genre knowledge can be limited to a
single instance of the genre rather than situated in a larger activity system; such limited
understanding can lead to confusion and subsequent difficulty in writing (n.p.).” (Notes
Toward) Example of negative transfer
“The first, what might be called “strict” boundary guarding, includes students who report
no “not” talk (in terms of genres or strategies) and who seem to maintain known genres
regardless of task. The second kind of boundary guarding is less strict in that students
report some strategy-related “not” talk and some modification of known genres by way of
adding strategies to known genres. (329)
These students, in other words, work to maintain the boundary marking their prior
knowledge, and at the most add only strategies to the schema they seek to preserve. By
way of contrast, the boundary crossing student accepts noviceship, often as a
consequence of struggling to meet the demands of a new writing task. Therefore, this
writer seems to experience multiple kinds of flux—such as uncertainty about task,
descriptions of writing according to what genre it is not, and the breakdown and
repurposing of whole genres that may be useful to students entering new contexts in FYC
(329).” (Notes Toward) Students enter FYC with two types of genre awareness which
then affects the way they use their genre awareness when encountering an unfamiliar one.
“Genre for Eugene, then, seems to be mapped assemblage-like onto a fundamental and
unchanging concept of writing located in expression and the unconscious.” (notes
toward) In this study, the researchers discovered the value of understanding genres in the
collegiate level. It aided students in making conscious decisions about their writing
strategy. The study also concluded that genre knowledge could also cause negative
transfer (as was the case with the young man writing the scientific study in standard
scientific format). “Put differently, he begins to see writing as synthetic and genres as
flexible, and in the process, he begins to develop a more capacious conception of writing,
based in part on his tracing similarities and differences across his own writing tasks past
and present.” But with direction genres can be better understood.
“But as the term progressed, Rick was able to use his new understanding of writing—
located in discourse communities and genres and keyed to reading data and explaining
them—as a way to frame one of his new assignments, a poster assignment.” (Notes
Toward) Genre can not be studied in isolation.
Ward
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language"
Vygotsky in Thought and Language explicitly distinguishes between learning and development,
arguing that learning leads development" (Genre and Cog pg 282) They are different.
" Vygotsky’s view, however, posits that learning prepares the learner for new stages of
development, where at some point the learned material becomes more than the sum of its parts,
but is rather added up, reorganized, and reintegrated at a different level, so it becomes seen in a
different light. This enables reflection on knowledge, perception, and understanding from a new
perspective. " (Genre and Cog pg 283) How we learn
"In the earliest period of language learning, Vygotsky sees little impact of the language on
preexisting cognition based on material relations with the world, although language learn- ing
does include a heightened and expanded relation to the world and expanded domains of shared
attention with one’s interlocutors. But this expansion is all interpersonal, part of the social
relation of communicating and learning to com- municate with the others around one. Gradually,
however, the child starts to engage in private speech, echoing to oneself the community attentions
and rela- tions embedded in language interaction. This internalization leads the child to selfregulation of attention and action." (Genre and Cognitive Development 285 ) Language development is
both and social and internal process
"Learning Theories"
"Writing to Learn"
"This phenomenon of cognitive refiguration stands behind much of the intui- tive appeal of the
Writing to Learn (WTL) movement, an enthusiasm that reaches beyond recognition that writing
can serve more modest roles in learning through articulating understanding and rehearsing
material to fix it in memory. " (Genre and Cog pg 279)
" This memory-focused writing to learn was evidenced by improved performance on content
examinations." (Genre and Cog pg 279) has shown to be effective
"Klein notes that all four cognitive hypotheses he finds in the writing to learn literature are on a
spectrum of problem solving around producing, planning, reflecting on, and structuring text—and
thus are not mutually exclusive nor fully independent." (Genre and Cog pg 281) It cannot stand
alone.
" Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson (2004) in a metanalysis of 48 WTL studies noted small
but significant genre effects on writing to learn, as measured by conventional measures of
academic achievement at all levels of education from elementary to higher education, with the
exception of grades 6-8 where writing to learn tasks had a cumulative negative effect size."
(Genre and Cog pg 281)
"Development is not influenced by learning, but learning is not possible without development.
From this perspective you might say writing to learn is precisely just writing to learn: an
opportunity to identify, rehearse, organize and reinforce memory of new material." (Genre and
Cog pg 283) WTL can only occur if some preconditions are met such as " physical ability to
record letters, cognitive abilities to code and decode, and the characteristics of short and long
term memory needed to write"
" Klein (1999) examines the WTL literature to sort out suggested mechanisms by which writing
might affect learning and examines the published data that might support each. He focuses
attention not so much on the character of the produced text as on the practices that are engaged as
one produces the text—that is he looks at cognitive mechanisms engaged in the writing process."
(Genre and Cog pg 280) Its not so much what is produced but rather how.
"Vygotsky’s view also stands in contrast to views which treat learning and de- velopment as
happening simultaneously, with development being just the accu- mulation of smaller acts of
learning. From this perspective WTL would allow for the accumulation of knowledge as well as
new skills of thinking introduced in relation to the assignment and practiced in fulfilling the
assignment. This view does allow for intellectual growth through explicit teaching and practice,
as one learns to carry out new cognitive tasks." (Genre and Cog pg 283)
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
“Victor Villanueva worries that Writing Across the Curriculum is assimilationist, “a
political state of mind more repressive than mere accommodation,” (2001) in his
responding to Donna LeCourt’s argument that WAC can foster critical consciousness,
using the pedagogy of Paulo Freire (1996). Villanueva seeks a way of fostering critical
consciousness in genres other than the personal narrative (which LeCourt recommends).”
(Teaching Critical)
"Schemata"
"Studies show that abstracted representations do not remain as isolated instances of events but become
components of larger, related events, schemata (Holyoak, 1984; Novick and Holyoak, 1991). Knowledge
representations are built up through many opportunities for observing similarities and differences across
diverse events. Schemata are posited as particularly important guides to complex thinking, including analogical
reasoning: “Successful analogical transfer leads to the induction of a general schema for the solved problems
that can be applied to subsequent problems” (National Research Council, 1994:43). Memory retrieval and
transfer are promoted by schemata because they derive from a broader scope of related instances than single
learning experiences." (How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition pg 65-66) Schemata
is a higher order thinking skill.
“Beaufort
suggests that the expertise students need to write successfully involves “mental
schema” they use to organize and apply knowledge about writing in new contexts (17).”
(Notes toward) Students needs to know how to map out the information in their brain as
well as be able to retrieve this information.
“While we speculate that college students, like our students, enter college with an
absence of prior knowledge relevant to the new situation, how students take up the new
knowledge relative to the old varies; and here, based on interview data, writing
assignments, and responses to the assignments, we describe three models of uptake.
Some students, like Eugene, seem to take up new knowledge in a way we call
assemblage: by grafting isolated bits of new knowledge onto a continuing schema of old
knowledge. Some, like Alice, take up new knowledge in ways we call remix: by
integrating the new knowledge into the schema of the old. And some, like Rick,
encounter what we call a critical incident—a failure to meet a new task successfully—
and use that occasion as a prompt to re-think writing altogether.” (Notes Towards) How
schema is employed differently but effectively.
.
"Socio-Cognitive"
"Constructivist Theory"
Research Findings
IMPLICATIONS
Implications for Teaching
"...students who kept academic journals framed by academi question performed btter on thier
essays than students who wrote dialogic response journals or wrote no journals." (Genre and
Cogn pg 280)"
"The authors also noted that frequent (two or three times a week), shorter (under ten minutes)
assignments done over a longer period (a term or longer) had more positive effects than longer
writing tasks, done less frequently, for a shorter period." (Genre and Cog pg 282)
"We have good evidence that direct instruction in prescriptive grammar and doing drill exercises
or related practices such as labeling parts of speech and dia- gramming sentences does not
translate into direct improvements in grammatical correctness in produced sentences in the short
term—that is in close enough proximity to be measured without so much intervening complexity
that we can make no association." (Genre and Cogn pg 287)
"Student and instructor interviews suggest that threshold concepts that accrue across
learning contexts, such as those in History 17b and Writing 2, need to be reinforced even
more strongly in multiple classroom settings by students and instructors. The
troublesome knowledge inherent in these concepts means that students need to engage in
frequent practice with them across courses, rather than focusing on them in discrete
instances. The ultimate goal of General Education courses, then, might be reconsidered to
focus on identifying, comprehending, and applying multiple threshold concepts across the
curriculum. " (The Value of Troublesome pg 18) Teaching cannot be done in a vacuum.
"• Initial learning is necessary for transfer, and a considerable amount is known about the kinds of learning
experiences that support transfer.
• Knowledge that is overly contextualized can reduce transfer; abstract representations of knowledge can help
promote transfer.
• Transfer is best viewed as an active, dynamic process rather than a passive end-product of a particular set of
learning experiences.
• All new learning involves transfer based on previous learning, and this fact has important implications for the
design of instruction that helps students learn. " (Learning and Transfer pg 53)
" that learning cannot be rushed; the complex cognitive activity of information integration requires time. "
(learning and transfer pg 58)
" When people think about transfer, it is common to think first about learning something and then assessing
the learner’s abilities to apply it to something else. But even the initial learning phase involves transfer be- cause
it is based on the knowledge that people bring to any learning situa- tion; see Box 3.8. The principle that people
learn by using what they know to construct new understandings (see Chapter 1) can be paraphrased as “all
learning involves transfer from previous experiences.” This principle has a number of important implications
for educational practice. First, students may have knowledge that is relevant to a learning situation that is not
acti- vated. By helping activate this knowledge, teachers can build on students’ strengths. Second, students may
misinterpret new information because of previous knowledge they use to construct new understandings. Third,
stu- dents may have difficulty with particular school teaching practices that con- flict with practices in their
community." (learning and transfer pg 68)
" Analyses of everyday environments have potential implications for edu- cation that are intriguing but need to
be thought through and researched carefully. There are many appealing strengths to the idea that learning
should be organized around authentic problems and projects that are fre- quently encountered in nonschool
settings: in John Dewey’s vision, “School should be less about preparation for life and more like life itself.” The
use of problem-based learning in medical schools is an excellent example of the benefits of looking at what
people need to do once they graduate and then crafting educational experiences that best prepare them for
these competen- cies (Barrows, 1985). Opportunities to engage in problem-based learning during the first year
of medical school lead to a greater ability to diagnose and understand medical problems than do opportunities
to learn in typical lecture-based medical courses (Hmelo, 1995). Attempts to make schooling more relevant to
the subsequent workplace have also guided the use of case-based learning in business schools, law schools, and
schools that teach educational leadership (Hallinger et al., 1993; Williams, 1992). " (transfer and learning pg
77) Learning should be about life, not a cheap imitation of.
“No one, no matter how knowledgeable, Freedman argued, can possibly articulate
for novices all the expectations and fine details that mark the texts of experienced
genre users. I can teach students about colon titles on academic papers,
for example, but I can’t teach them exactly which ones will be successful and which fall
flat.” (Teaching Critical)
“It
is not enough simply to add critique to our explicit teaching of specific
genres. Our critical awareness of any particular genre or even discipline can be as limited
and incomplete as our knowledge and teaching of a particular genre.” (Teaching critical)
“Teach them the nature and strategies of the op-ed genre,
and they’ll be even more likely to make conscious and deliberate rhetorical decisions.
So genre will affect our students’ learning whether we teach genres explicitly or not… If
we teach a genre explicitly, we will inevitably teach it incompletely, but students will
understand more about it than they would have if we had taught them nothing about it at
all.” (Teaching Critical)
"Threshold Concepts"
"Thus writing at the sentence and subsentence level goes through many trans- formations as we
integrate new forms and levels of understanding of the texts we and others produce. What those
transition moments are, what threshold of knowledge and internalization is necessary, what
triggers the change—I leave as open questions." (Genre and Cog pg 287)
" Beyond learning to read and reproduce the taxonomies, there are in most fields genres of
identification, application, inquiry, analysis, synthesis, planning, and coordination using those
terms and concepts embedded in the namings of the field." (Genre and Cogn pg 288)
"TC's also challenge the learner to reflect on tacit knowledge of which she is 'only
peripherally aware or entirely unconscious" (The Value of pg2) Creates or brings forth
knowledge that may otherwise remain lost/hidden.
" they are “portals” through which learners must pass. Borrowing from Victor Turner’s
work, Meyer and Land note that the movement through these liminal portals does not
happen in a straight line but instead in iterative and recursive stages. In a preliminal
stage, a learner’s tacit views are interrupted as she is introduced to and begins to grapple
with a threshold concept. In a liminal stage, the learner begins to enact that knowledge; at
the same time, she becomes aware of her work with the concept and her interactions with
it. In a postliminal stage the learner becomes transformed, “beginning to think” like a
member of the field or area in which the concept is situated, participating in the concepts
within the disciplinary/epistemic communities where they are situated. Here, the learner
demonstrates discursive knowledge of the concept, applying it to analyses and questions
in ways that both reflect fuller metacognitive awareness of her own processes and
awareness of the epistemic processes of the disciplines where the threshold concepts are
used (Meyer and Land, “Liminality” 23)." (The Value of Troublesome pg 3) Stages for
working through thresholds
These include the idea that all writing is situated within genre and that genre itself
constitutes a form of social action (Miller). From this perspective, genres are not just
forms of writing. They are the mediating tools (Vygotsky) that bind academic and
disciplinary communities. They reflect the values of those communities; at the same time,
they shape, contribute to, and perpetuate the values associated with them, as well (Smart).
In order to participate in these genres, writers must understand how writing, in this
regard, represents more than just “words on a page”—writing is how individuals gain
entry and membership in communities of discourse (Lave and Wenger; Soliday). Writers
must thus develop an understanding of the roles of purpose, audience, and context in the
formation, consumption, and perpetuation of genres and the conventions from which they
"
are constituted. " (The Value of Troublesome pg 3) the many aspects of threshold
concepts.
" [Threshold Concepts] include the idea that all writing is situated within genre and that
genre itself constitutes a form of social action (Miller). From this perspective, genres are
not just forms of writing. They are the mediating tools (Vygotsky) that bind academic
and disciplinary communities. They reflect the values of those communities; at the same
time, they shape, contribute to, and perpetuate the values associated with them, as well
(Smart). In order to participate in these genres, writers must understand how writing, in
this regard, represents more than just “words on a page”—writing is how individuals gain
entry and membership in communities of discourse (Lave and Wenger; Soliday)." (The
Value of Troublesome pg 4)
" Sometimes, instructors described how they situated writing, reading, and analytic skills
in the course explicitly within history as a discipline, indicating moments where they
consciously enacted—and helped students to enact—an awareness of the distinct qualities
associated with this context for learning and with the idea that GE should introduce
students to disciplinary threshold concepts. Such enactment indicates the kind of metaawareness that is embedded in threshold concepts in composition and history, since it is
associated with situating text-making (and its attendant values) within a particular
context." (The Value of Troublesome pg 5)
" Students must be able to identify context, genre, and audience—an understanding of
threshold concepts that we associate with postliminal enactments." (The Value of
Troublesome Knowledge pg 7). What is needed for threshold concepts.
Historical thinking, by implication, is much different than sociological thinking, which
presumably has developed theoretical constructs that are more applicable across time and
space where specific contexts are somewhat less important. In highlighting disciplinary
boundaries—and hence the need to write differently depending on the discipline, this
reflects movement toward a postliminal understanding of threshold concepts as important
ways of defining these boundaries. Lucinda, in effect, was asking the student to
distinguish between historical analysis and sociological analysis. : (“The Value of
Troublesome Knowledge” pg 8) The differences may be minimal but do make a huge
difference within that discourse community.
"But despite the ways in which the course pointed to threshold concepts in history that
were also relevant for learning across general education contexts, these concepts were
only implied, not explicitly emphasized.... Not surprisingly, the lack of explicit
instruction about how threshold concepts in history related to those in general education
were apparent in the first set of data that we gathered—surveys from students in 17b
asking questions about how they defined theses and evidence, what they knew about
those things, and where they learned them. " (The Value of pg 10) TC's need to be taught
explicitly
" Susan’s description of her project points to postliminal conscious enactment of the
threshold concepts shared across History 17b and Writing 2. She is making explicit,
conscious choices in the development of her genres based on her analyses of multiple
purposes, audiences, and context for her work." (The Value of pg 12) It is possible for
students to correctly understand and implement TC's.
"These snapshots point to the importance of identifying threshold concepts and the
importance of troublesome knowledge in those threshold concepts -- for both students
and instructors." (The Value of Troublesome pg 17) There is value in TC's.
" Student and instructor interviews suggest that threshold concepts that accrue across
learning contexts, such as those in History 17b and Writing 2, need to be reinforced even
more strongly in multiple classroom settings by students and instructors. The
troublesome knowledge inherent in these concepts means that students need to engage in
frequent practice with them across courses, rather than focusing on them in discrete
instances. The ultimate goal of General Education courses, then, might be reconsidered to
focus on identifying, comprehending, and applying multiple threshold concepts across the
curriculum." (The Value of pg 18) It cannot be done in isolation.
"Metacognitive Awareness"
By thinking like a person in that field "the learner demonstrates discursive knowledge of
the concept, applying it to analyses and questions in ways that both reflect fuller
metacognitive awareness of her own processes and awareness of the epistemic processes
of the disciplines where the threshold concepts are used... This development of
metacognitive awareness is an important step toward “high road transfer” (Perkins and
Solomon), which “depends on deliberate, mindful abstraction of skill or knowledge from
one context for application to another” (the Value of pg 3) Why metacognitive
awareness is useful.
" This intersection of liminal and postliminal participation in threshold concepts,
especially as it reflects the development of conscious, discursive metacognitive work on
the part of the learner, is critical. Anastasia Efklides has shown that when this
combination of postliminal development and specific application is achieved, it can have
a profound effect on a learner’s perception of herself, that “[w]hat is task specific can
become part of the person’s dispositional characteristics and have long-term effects on
students’ willingness to learn and to regulate their learning” (65). This question of affect
and self-efficacy, while not explicitly addressed in general education or transfer research,
runs throughout both." (The value of pg 15)
" Metacognitive approaches to instruction have been shown to increase the degree to which students will
transfer to new situations without the need for explicit prompting. The following examples illustrate research
on teaching metacognitive skills across domains of read- ing, writing, and mathematics.
Reciprocal teaching to increase reading comprehension (Palincsar and Brown, 1984) is designed to help
students acquire specific knowledge and also to learn a set of strategies for explicating, elaborating, and
monitoring the understanding necessary for independent learning. The three major components of reciprocal
teaching are instruction and practice with strate- gies that enable students to monitor their understanding;
provision, initially by a teacher, of an expert model of metacognitive processes; and a social setting that enables
joint negotiation for understanding. The knowledge- acquisition strategies the students learn in working on a
specific text are not acquired as abstract memorized procedures, but as skills instrumental in achieving subjectarea knowledge and understanding. The instructional pro- cedure is reciprocal in the sense that a teacher and a
group of students take turns in leading the group to discuss and use strategies for comprehending and
remembering text content. " (Transfer and Learning pg 67) Proof that megacognition is a valuable tool.
"An emphasis on metacognition can enhance many programs that use new technologies to introduce students
to the inquiry methods and other tools that are used by professionals in the workplace (see Chapter 8). The
important role of metacognition for learning has been demonstrated in the context of a “thinker tools”
program that lets students run simulations of physics experiments (White and Frederickson, 1998), as well as in
adding a metacognitive component to a computer program designed to help college students learn biology. The
value of using video to model important metacognitive learning procedures has also been shown to help
learners analyze and reflect on models (Bielaczyc et al., 1995). All of these strategies engage learners as active
participants in their learning by focusing their attention on critical elements, encouraging abstraction of
common themes or procedures (principles), and evaluating their own progress toward understanding." (transfer
and learning pg 68) The practical application of metacognition could save time and mimics workplace thinking.
" Finally, a metacognative approach to teaching can increase transfer by helping students learn about
themselves as learners in the context of acquir- ing content knowledge. One characteristic of experts is an
ability to monitor and regulate their own understanding in ways that allows them to keep learning adaptive
expertise: this is an important model for students to emu- late. " (transfer and learning pg 78) The lasting
effects of teaching with metacognition at the forefront.
We are less likely to forget what we understand over what we memorize (transfer and learning)
“The Jarratt
et al. study, perhaps most importantly, suggests that metacognition students
develop before transfer occurs can be prompted; students may not necessarily realize that
learning has occurred until they are prompted, but this is the point at which transfer can
occur (6).” (notes toward) Metacognition is the thekey to transfer (according to
Beauforts findings)
"Pedagogy"
“All genre pedagogies appear to share the same larger goal: to give
students access to language, structures, and institutions that are important
for their individual, academic, and professional development. Different genre
pedagogies result, though, from emphasizing different theoretical concerns.
As I delineate some of the theoretical underpinnings of genre pedagogies, I
make no claim to comprehensiveness. These five claims seem to me, at this point
in genre studies, to be some essential ones and are the ones around which I base
my own genre pedagogy.” (Thinking Critical)
“Genre pedagogies need to continue to explain why less than full
articulation is sufficient to their aims of giving access to particular genres. The
second response, moving from seeing generic form to understanding generic
purpose within social contexts, requires cognitive abilities that may be beyond
children until a certain level of development has been reached. Genre curricula
at different levels, of course, will necessarily address the cognitive abilities at
those levels. (Teaching Critical 344)
“If we wish our pedagogy and our theory to support one another, we need to confront
those challenges and design pedagogies with sufficient complexity to be theoretically
sound. One way to build a more complex genre pedagogy is to build a curriculum
that addresses multiple approaches.” (Teaching Critical)
“Beginning with genre as particle, I note again that any genre pedagogy must
use some particular genres, at least as examples. My goal in choosing and using
particular genres, though, is not to teach any particular genre fully and thoroughly
so that students have acquired the genres. Rather, I aim to give students
enough experiences with those genres that at least some elements of those genres
might serve as antecedents when students acquire unfamiliar genres in the future.
I agree with Bazerman and Little that we have a “pedagogic responsibility”
“to teach students to speak and write for academic purposes in first and second
languages” (2005).” (Teaching Critical)
“Without developing their genre awareness, people are more at the mercy of existing
genres and existing power structures and dynamics. With a more highly
developed genre awareness, people have a better chance of seeing how genres act
upon them and of affecting those actions.” (Teaching Critical 348)
“Developing genre awareness is no easier than developing any other kind of
critical consciousness. I structure my curriculum around the same tagmemics
heuristic, of helping students see genres as things, then as processes, and within
larger contexts.” (Teaching Critical)
“Genre pedagogies can become part of a larger critical education, with the full powers of
genre recognized and students’ powers enhanced. As teachers of writing, we must use
genres, but we must use them knowingly and deliberately.” (Teaching Critical)
“As Arthur Applebee and Judith Langer’s continuing research on the high school
English/Language Arts curriculum shows, the high school classroom is a literature
classroom, whereas the first-year writing classroom—which despite the diverse forms it
takes, from first-year seminars to WAC-based approaches to cultural studies and critical
pedagogy approaches (see Fulkerson; Delivering College Composition)—is a writing
classroom. The result for our students—and, we think, others like them––is that they
enter college with very limited experience with the conceptions and kinds of writing and
reading they will engage with during the first year of postsecondary education.” (Notes
toward) What should we be doing at the high school level?
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer"
"Attempts to cover too many topics too quickly may hinder learning and subsequent transfer because students
(a) learn only iso- lated sets of facts that are not organized and connected or (b) are introduced to organizing
principles that they cannot grasp because they lack enough specific knowledge to make them meaningful.
Providing students with op- portunities to first grapple with specific information relevant to a topic has been
shown to create a “time for telling” that enables them to learn much more from an organizing lecture (as
measured by subsequent abilities to transfer) than students who did not first have these specific opportunities;
see Box 3.6.
Providing students with time to learn also includes providing enough time for them to process information.
Pezdek and Miceli (1982) found that on one particular task, it took 3rd graders 15 seconds to integrate pictorial
and verbal information; when given only 8 seconds, they couldn’t mentally integrate the information, probably
due to short-term memory limitations. The implication is that learning cannot be rushed; the complex cognitive
activity of information integration requires time. " (learning and transfer pg 58) students need the time and
prior knowledge to properly function within a discourse community ( aka classroom)
“If we teach a genre explicitly, we will inevitably teach it incompletely, but
students will understand more about it than they would have if we had taught
them nothing about it at all.” (Teaching Critical)
"Impediments of transfer"
"Negative transfer"
"Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson (2004) in a metanalysis of 48 WTL studies noted small
but significant genre effects on writing to learn, as measured by conventional measures of
academic achievement at all levels of education from elementary to higher education, with the
exception of grades 6-8 where writing to learn tasks had a cumulative negative effect size. The
authors speculate that the negative effect in middle school may have to do with the restructuring
of education around separate subjects, and the introduction to differing forms of writing, so that
the genre learning interfered with the learning of material through that genre." (Genre and Cog
282) WTL proved to hinder the learning in this case. Authors attribute it to the change in
discourse community they had originally been a part of .
“positive transfer
(performance improvement) versus negative transfer (performance
interference) in another context.” (Notes toward) Definition of Positive and negative
transfer.
" Transfer could also be negative in the sense that experience with one set of events could hurt performance on
related tasks." (learning and transfer pg 53) It can happen
"Luchins and Luchins (1970) studied how prior experience can limit people’s abilities to function efficiently in
new settings. They used water jar problems where partici- pants had three jars of varying sizes and an
unlimited water supply and were asked to obtain a required amount of water. Everyone received a practice
problem. People in the experimental group then received five problems (problems 2-6) prior to critical test
problems (7, 8, 10, and 11). People in the control group went straight from the practice problems to
problems 7-11. Problems 2-6 were designed to establish a “set” (Einstellung) for solving the problems in a
particular manner (using containers b-a-2c as a solution). People in the experimental group were highly
likely to use the Einstellung Solution on the critical problems even though more efficient procedures were
available." (transfer and learning pg 54) in this case, the consequence of negative transfer was use of
incorrect procedure because of prior experiences.
" Because learning involves transfer from previous experiences, one’s existing knowledge can also make it
difficult to learn new information. Some- times new information will seem incomprehensible to students, but
this feeling of confusion can at least let them identify the existence of a problem (see, e.g., Bransford and
Johnson, 1972; Dooling and Lachman, 1971). A more problematic situation occurs when people construct a
coherent (for them) representation of information while deeply misunderstanding the new information. Under
these conditions, the learner doesn’t realize that he or she is failing to understand. Two examples of this
phenomenon are in Chapter 1: Fish Is Fish (Lionni, 1970), where the fish listens to the frog’s descriptions of
people and constructs its own idiosyncratic images, and at- tempts to help children learn that the earth is
spherical (Vosniadou and Brewer, 1989). Children’s interpretations of the new information are much different
than what adults intend." (transfer and learning pg 70) adult vs child understanding is different. we need to
recognize their misconceptions before we can add to their pool of knowledge.
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Disposition"
“What I see in my students, and in the participants in my various research projects, leads
me to consider that people seem to primarily inhabit what I will call either problemexploring or answer-getting dispositions. Problem-exploring dispositions incline a person
toward curiosity, reflection, consideration of multiple possibilities, a willingness to
engage in a recursive process of trial and error, and toward a recognition that more than
one solution can “work.” Answer-getting dispositions seek right answers quickly and are
averse to open consideration of multiple possibilities. The first disposition is appropriate
for solving ill-structured problems, while the second seems connected to well-structured
problems often found in the field of education.{1} In considering this notion of
dispositions, I find Bourdieu’s discussion of “habitus” to be helpful. He defines habitus
as “a system (i.e. a set of interacting elements) of durable, transposable dispositions”
(Logic 53). John Thompson, his editor, summarizes Bourdieu’s view of habitus as
a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways. The
dispositions generate practices, perceptions, and attitudes which are “regular” without
being consciously co-ordinated or governed by any “rule.” The dispositions which
constitute the habitus are inculcated, structured, durable, generative, and transposable.
(12)” (Creative Repurposing) The description of the two types of dispositions.
“Bourdieu argues that a set of dispositions, habitus, once inculcated, is not easily
changeable: dispositions are not “readily amenable to conscious reflection and
modification” (Thompson 13). Further, habitus “provides individuals with a sense of how
to act and respond in the course of their daily lives. It ‘orients’ their actions and
inclinations without strictly determining them. It gives them a ‘feel for the game,’ a sense
of what is appropriate in the circumstances and what is not, a ‘practical sense’” (13).
Thus, students who have spent twelve years in an educational field that teaches toward
standardized tests and discourages questions would likely emerge with strongly
developed answer-getting dispositions that they are not consciously aware of but that
guide their actions when they face new problems, including new, difficult, and illstructured rhetorical problems. Bourdieu argues that such dispositions are not simply
cognitive orientations, but embodied ones, that dispositions are literally in the body, in
what he refers to as “bodily hexis:” “turned into a permanent disposition, a durable way
of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking” (Thompson 13).”
(Creative Repurposing) Dispositions are like habits. Hard to break. It is suggested that
they are learned early on.
“Nicolette’s problem-exploring disposition becomes apparent whenever she faces a
roadblock. Her approach to challenging new rhetorical problem serves as an example.
When she encounters a new or difficult rhetorical problem, she analyzes all the available
possibilities and questions them. She looks for examples, analyzes examples to see where
they are similar or different (“compared if it fit exactly, of if there was a little leniency
where it could be different”), determining how much room there is for play (“the fact that
the examples deviated a little from the template but were still really close meant that
there would be a little wiggle room”), and then she drafts possible responses, about which
she usually seems to seek feedback from others. She doesn’t expect each new problem to
be like the last, but she assumes she can bring prior knowledge to bear or find available
resources that will help her explore the problem.
What is most striking to me about Nicolette’s approach is her confidence in her ability to
explore solutions and make changes when her solutions are not effective.” (Creative
Repurposing) The advantages to problem-exploring dispositions.
“These examples demonstrate ways that individuals and fields can inhabit problemexploring dispositions, and suggest there is a dynamic relationship between the
disposition of the individual and the field. John, for example, was deeply influenced by
the problem-exploring disposition of Iowa State’s Computer Science program, and he
grew to inhabit that disposition himself, embodying it when he went to work for Java,
where many other employees inhabited answer-getting dispositions. Nicolette brought
with her a deeply established disposition that enabled her to approach problems
reflectively and with an openness to multiple possibilities; when she was forced to act in
a field that did not provide the necessary affordances for her to explore and solve
problems effectively, she protected her disposition even at the cost of a possibly higher
grade. She did not change the “Western Civilization” classroom disposition, but neither
did that classroom’s disposition change her own. Her experience there did force her,
however, to make selective choices about her values and approaches. Her confidence and
disposition were, in the end, more important to her than a grade. As a result, her own
confident problem-exploring disposition remains as she moves in and out of other
systems.” (Creative Repurposing) Dispositions are engrained in this example.
“From where I sit in Florida, the positive examples I gave here of problem-exploring
dispositions appear to be the exception. We seem to be living in a society that is
discouraging expansive learning and driving problem-exploring dispositions out of
school habitus at an alarming rate.” (Creative Repurposing) The less students are exposed
to problem solving dispositions, the less they will pick it up. Public education is
practicing it less and less whichi is creating society that looks for answers instead of
asking questions.
“Students with problem-exploring dispositions are threats to the dominant class(es): “the
dominant classes have an interest in defending the integrity of doxa or, short of this,
establishing in its place the necessarily imperfect substitute, orthodoxy ” (Outline 169).
As more students find their way to institutions of higher education, those institutions
cannot support the dominant structures and simultaneously impart problem-exploring
dispositions to their students.” (Creative Repurposing) There is a threat but are they the
ones creating these types of classroom paradigms or is it us?
"Threshold Concepts"
"These findings send us back to the implications for General Education. Student and
instructor interviews suggest that threshold concepts that accrue across learning contexts,
such as those in History 17b and Writing 2, need to be reinforced even more strongly in
multiple classroom settings by students and instructors." (The Value of pg 18) There
needs to be a push for the teaching TC across the curriculum.
"Habits of Mind"
Writing
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
Genre