Jacob Johnston, Chapter 13

1. Positive transfer is when knowledge learned in one application actually helps

the learner in another application. For example, it is often said that learning a
second language actually helps a person to learn a third language, perhaps
because it teaches the individual skills for language assimilation and also
perhaps because it teaches them what parts of their native tongue aren’t a
part of every language. Negative transfer is when knowledge learned in one
application actually makes it more difficult to perform in another application.
This could be seen as social interaction skills learned in one social group
actually keeps the individual from interacting appropriately in another social
group because behaviors that were allowed or even encouraged there are
considered inappropriate in the new group.

2. Specific transfer involves knowledge learned in one application transferring to

help the learner in a very similar application. For example, I learned
racquetball in college pretty easily because it is fairly similar to tennis and I
was able to transfer much of what I had learned. However, general transfer is
when knowledge from an unrelated application helps the learner in a new
application. For example, I once heard a story about a kid with little athletic
ability who preferred playing chess. The climax of the story involved the kid
finding out that his strategic skills from chess helped him develop strategy
that actually made him a pretty decent coach of soccer despite being a lousy
player. This would have been general transfer because chess is not very
similar to soccer. Formal discipline emphasizes general transfer. Education
designed under the formal discipline model teaches a lot of things that don’t
have a lot of direct applications in real like Latin and memorization of poems.
The thought is that this practice of the mind makes it better prepared to
learning others things as well. Thorndike’s Identical Elements model was just
the opposite in that it emphasized specific transfer and said that knowledge
learned in one area only helped the learner in another area if it had many of
the same elements like how taking calculus will likely help you in physics
because the math that is used overlaps. The information processing
perspective doesn’t really emphasize either type of transfer. In fact, it says
that transfer will only occur when both the current application and the
previous application are in the working memory at the same time and that
that won’t happen unless there are retrieval cues for both applications close
together in long-term storage. The situated learning perspective also
deemphasizes transfer by saying learners tend to be more likely to apply
previously learned knowledge in the environment in which it was learned
than they are elsewhere.
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 13

3. Algorithms are specific, step-by-step methods of solving problems. These are

very common in math, but are good in any situation that can be tackled in a
very methodical manner. For example, in mowing my yard, I mow the edges
of the space first and then work my way toward the center one slightly
smaller loop at a time. I can use this to mow any yard, even if I’m not familiar
with it because the problem is well defined and similar to the problem
presented by my yard. However, this algorithm would not work well for
brushing my teeth. Because algorithms are specific and detailed, they only
work for well defined problems where you know the details and know the
desired outcome. Heuristics are better for ill-defined problems because they
are not as specific in scope and don’t have the set structure so can be more
easily applied to different situations. Instead of step-by-step instructions,
heuristics are methods like brainstorming, analogies and visual imagery that
help one solve problems. These are not limited to a narrow area of use like
algorithms. I can easily use brainstorming to come up with ideas on what to
right for a newspaper article, but I can also use the method to come up with
ideas on how I’d like to design a new chicken coop or what I want to cook for
supper today.

4. Working memory capacity limits the amount of information that can be

processed during problem solving. This is why many people cannot play
chess on the level of the top masters. They simply can’t keep track of all of
the possibilities and situations one needs to keep track of in order to solve
the problem of the best next move. The storage in long term memory
involves both what parts of the problem you focus on and store in your
memory and also how you encode those memories based on past knowledge.
Many riddles take advantage of this. For example, a riddle I learned in high
school is that “Two men are found dead inside a cabin on top of a mountain.
There are no roads or tracks leading up to the cabin and there are no doors
to the outside and there are no windows that can be opened. There is no sign
of struggle. How did they die?” The riddle throws a lot of detail at you (I think
the original had even more) so you end up only focusing on what you think is
important. Also, the key to the riddle here is the cabin. When we say “cabin
on a mountain” we think of a log cabin. Instead, the riddle is referring to a
cabin in a plane and the cause of death is now obvious. The plane crashed.
Retrieval from long term memory is important to access relevant prior
knowledge that will help to solve the problem. For example retrieval got in
the way in the earlier example because the “on a mountain” part sent us
looking for retrieval clues for information involving log cabins and the
outdoors. Anxiety can also mess with accurate retrieval. This is perhaps an
explanation for choking in athletes. They know what they’re supposed to do,
but in a stressful situation, timely retrieval failed and they made a mistake.
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 13

Metacognition is important because an individual who is more

metacognitively engaged during problem solving will be more flexible in
coming up with solutions and will also recognize the size and complexity of
the problem. Individuals who don’t believe the problem is within their
capabilities may not even attempt to solve the problem and those who don’t
think about their processes enough may try to use inappropriate tools or
methods. Using our riddle before, when I’m usually approached by a riddle, I
quickly recognize by the structure that something is supposed to be off and
then I intentionally start to look for words with double meanings or seemingly
inconsequential details that could make a major change. I also try to keep
myself from being too rigid in my understanding of any term or saying in the
riddle because I know that can throw me off.

5. First, students need to learn information thoroughly and in a meaningful way.

When algorithms to solve problems are taught but the student does not
understand why they work, they’ll often apply them in inappropriate
situations. To prevent this, teaching for understanding and not just rote
learning of algorithms is important. Similarly, they should learn the problem-
solving strategies in a meaningful manner. In math class, it’s important to
understand how to work the problem to make sure you understand the
process. It’s also important to know that you can estimate the amount of
paint you need to buy by being able to calculate the surface area of your
wall. Self-discovery activities in which the students are allowed to come up
with problem-solving strategies on their own because this helps the students
understand the properties of what’s being taught even better. However, this
shouldn’t be the sole method of teaching and the students need to be
sufficiently self-regulated. Students should also be expected to transfer skills
to new situations and taught how to do so. This creates a culture of transfer
and a mental set that leads the student to automatically look to transfer
skills. Finally, some skills need to be practiced to the level of automaticity.
Simple arithmetic is a good example of this. Complex math problems in high
school and college would potentially include too much information for
working memory if students are focusing too much on addition and
multiplication. Similarly, students who read poorly are often too busy
sounding out words to focus on meaning.

6. In English classes we often work on teaching standard English, something

many of our students don’t hear much or at all when at home. However, we
don’t want the students to drop their usage of standard English at the door.
While it’s perfectly fine to code shift, it sounds silly to speak entirely standard
English in some settings, in others, the ability to speak and write that way is
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 13

a definite advantage. Job interviews and working with customers are two very
important examples. However, if my students encode and store this language
information as simply applying to English class, they are very unlikely to
transfer the knowledge to the real world. Also, if the learning is not
meaningful learning, they may only learn it as it applies to the types of
speaking and writing used in class and not know how to apply those rules to
business language. Once they get to the new situation of applying for a job or
working with customers, they may not encode that situation as having
anything to do with their high school environment and instead rely on the
language skills they learned at home which may not reflect well on them
outside of that environment.

7. First, I would work with my students on helping them learn to define ill-
defined problems. In the real world, problems are often less well-defined as
they are in a classroom setting and to be able to transfer classroom
knowledge to the real world, the students need to be able to know how to
identify the problems and recognize when that prior knowledge is relevant. A
second strategy would to use real world examples in the class that allow the
students to use what they learn as they learn it. In that way, the information
is more likely to be coded as relevant to the real world than rather just
something done to pass a class. Finally, I could include measures of transfer
and problem solving in my assessments to see if the students are getting the
point. In my high school, the English department already structures our tests
this way. Instead of asking questions over the actual stories we read in class,
the test presents new reading selections and asks them to use the strategies
and elements we learned to answer questions about those selections.

Name __________________________________________VCR WORDS

By Bern Sharfman

While you were out….we taped this quick quiz. Every answer is a word that contains
the letters V, C, and R in that order. How many of the 16 words can you identify with
the help of the given clues?
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 13

1. Chapel leader VICAR

2. Loud, as a complaint vociferous

3. Longtime English queen Victoria

4. Written receipt voucher

5. Sell at an inflated price overcharge

6. Popular Cigarette brand Viceroy

7. Of cars, trucks, etc. vehicular

8. Genial, like an uncle avuncular

9. Airplane’s course direction vector

10. Horror story author H.P. Lovecraft

11. Word stock vocabulary

12. Everyday speech vernacular

13. Squeeze in too many overcrowd

14. Purely instinctive visceral

 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 13

15. Experience the actions of others vicariously

16. Successful ending of a contest victory

Response to Chapter 13 Handout: This handout seems to go well with what the
book wrote about metacognition. These instructions serve as a guide for thinking
about the problem clearly, getting a good handle on it, carefully planning your
approach and then attacking it using the approach you came up with earlier. With
my students, I notice they often shoot from the hip and try to throw the first thing
that comes to mind at a problem without thinking it through and working through
this sort of problem solving strategy would really help them as long as they were
able to transfer it to parts of their lives outside of class.