kitchen table math, the sequel: hyperspecificity redux

Friday, July 20, 2007

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.


hyperspecificity in autism
hyperspecificity in autism and animals
hyperspecificty in the rest of my life
hyperspecificity redux

Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise
Devlin on Lave
rightwingprof on what college students don't know
percent troubles
what is 10 percent?
birthday and a vacation


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

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