hyperspecificity redux

from Robert Slavin's Educational Psychology:

The most important thing to know about transfer of learning is that it cannot be assumed (Mayer & Wittrock, 1996). Just because a student has mastered a skill or concept in one setting or circumstance, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the student will be able to apply this skill or concept to a new setting, even if the setting seems (at least to the teacher) to be very similar (Mayer & Wittrock, 1996)….Lave (1988)^* describes a man in a weight-loss program who was faced with the problem of measuring out a serving of cottage cheese that was three-quarters of the usual two-thirds cup allowance. The man, who had passed college calculus, measured out two-thirds of a cup of cottage cheese, dumped it out in a circle on a cutting board, marked a cross on it, and scooped away one quadrant. It never occurred to him to multiply 2/3 x 3/4 = 1/2, an operation that almost any sixth-grader could do on paper (but few could apply in a practical situation).
p. 229

That's about the speed of things around here.


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^* Lave, J. Cognition in Practice Boston: Cambridge Press