Transfer of Learning: Connecting Concepts During Problem Solving

A concern of many educators and managers is students' ability to transfer concepts and procedures learned in school to the work environment. When children are taught a skill, such as solving a mathematical problem, they often fail to recognize that their new skill can be used to solve a similar problem outside of school. In other cases, students who are skilled with certain tasks outside of school often have difficulty transferring concepts learned from these experiences to the solving of well-structured problems in schools, such as those often found on mathematics and science tests. These findings demonstrate the inability of students to recognize the transferability of concepts learned from solving well-structured problems in the classroom to ill-structured problems faced outside of the classroom and also the transferability of concepts learned from solving ill-structured problems, similar to those encountered in the real world, to the solving of well-structured problems encountered in the classroom. Various curricula and outreach programs, such as Design, Technology, and Engineering for All Children, Engineering by Design[TM], Project Lead the Way, Engineering is Elementary[R], LEGO[R] Engineering, and others, offer various types of problem-based and project-based experiences, which engage students in authentic problem solving. These learning initiatives help to improve students' ability to transfer knowledge, concepts, and skills learned in schools to real-life contexts. This study focuses on one such curriculum--Project Lead the Way (PLTW)--a multi-year, problem-based/project-based pre-engineering curriculum that is used by some schools in their engineering and technology education program. Since a large portion of the PLTW objectives emphasize content from mathematics and/or science standards, it is the authors' view that students should be able to demonstrate the ability to connect concepts learned from engaging in PLTW curriculum activities to the solving of mathematics and science test problems in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to determine if PLTW students are able to better transfer mathematics, science, and design concepts from one situation to another than students who have not taken the PLTW courses and the extent to which students are able to make connections to concepts learned in the PLTW courses to concepts that they are required to use when solving standardized test problems. The authors found significant relationships betwe