PowerPoint_WHERETO. Girls Go Tech | National Girls Collaborative Project. Anybody can learn | Code.org. Social Media Changing Learning: Eduardo Briceno at TEDxManhattanBeach. Carol Dweck: Mindset interview. Giving Students Meaningful Work:Even Geniuses Work Hard. Mindset Works®: Student Motivation through a Growth Mindset, by Carol Dweck, Ph.D. Transfer as the point of education. The critical goal of transfer. Arguably transfer is the aim of any education. Given that there is too much for anyone to learn; given that unpredictability is inevitable; given that being flexible and adaptive with one’s repertoire is key to any future success, it stands to reason that we should focus our ‘backward-design’ efforts on the goal of transfer, regardless of what and who we teach (and in spite of pressures to merely ‘cover content’ – which ironically inhibits transfer and worsens test scores, as I discuss below and in the next post).
The point of school is not to get good at school but to effectively parlay what we learned in school in other learning and in life. This notion is now front and center in the latest Understanding by Design (UbD) book, Creating High-Quality Units. The new Template highlights transfer goals since “understanding” surely implies, among other things “effective use of content.” But… few teachers plan, teach, and assesses as if this were the case.