Cognitive Transfer & Learning-- take 'er slow

Dan Schwartz gave a great talk to the NU engineering faculty (and a few of us LS folks) yesterday on knowledge transfer. He highlighted the naive belief that efficiency works in education. He suggested that this was particularly so in the U.S. where we define success often by the degree of efficiency (low variability, high accuracy, and rapid); e.g. tests are often timed (the SAT, etc.) and we're obsessed with Piagetian stages relative to our eastern counterparts.

He claims:

• We must distinguish between different types of expertise; e.g. routine expertise:high level of efficiency at a recurrent task or adaptive expertise: capacity to transfer information across diverse contexts. Any superintendent or business exec with his/her head outta the sand understands the costs involved in training, and that exec also understands the tomorrow will not have the same needs as today, so the need for adaptive expertise has never been greater...
• No "master" (e.g. Mozart, etc.) made any significant contribution to his/her field without ten years of experience.
• The stigma of inefficient learners prevents us from innovating and re-structuring our mental models; i.e. any time we innovate we will appear worse for a while (e.g. Tiger Woods took a year off to re-work his stroke).
• Homework vs. hobby dichotomy: homework is motivated by punishment and by belief of increased satisfaction; while, hobbies are motivated by perceived gradual improvement.
• Adaptive expertise derives from 1. Knowledge of general principles, skills, etc. & 2. Knowledge of contexts to which they apply. (Typically, we teach students 1 but not 2).
• Surface features are very important for retention/recall. If we teach concepts more abstractly they will transfer better because surface features are minimized. (Stop telling students what steps to take as they simple focus on the steps; instead, discuss the concepts required to complete them).
• For students to develop adaptive expertise and the ability to learn across environments we need to develop their deep cognitive structures.