Teach for Transfer

One can say that a primary aim of education in general is to achieve understandings in students that will transfer out of the classroom into the real world and to novel phenomena. 

One set of tools that educators use to cultivate these transfer skills is the engagement with analogies, metaphors, models and narratives. These tools are equally important and prevalent in scientific inquiry and science communication. Important in the engagement with and reflection on analogies is the explicit mapping of similarities and differences between analogous phenomena, particularly in terms of principles, processes and behaviors that go beyond mere surface features (Glynn, 2008; Harrison & Treagust, 2006).

Continuous engagement with analogy mappings across content material helps train students’ understanding of the nature of higher-level principles studied in models, experiments, or across case studies in biology and society, and even in everyday experience of ourselves as complex systems, and to understand that a diversity of context-specific instantiations of these principles may exist across these contexts. 

Therefore, one of our overarching teaching tools used across various lesson materials is comprised of scaffolded analogy mapping activities with the aim to help students link specific example phenomena to generalized principles in evolution, behavioral ecology, and sustainability. 

Examples include:

• complex systems dynamics such as feedback loops across domains and levels of organization (including physiology, psychology, ecology, earth system, social interactions, society). More information and teaching materials...

• comparing decision making processes in honeybees and human groups by principles of collective decision making (Seeley, 2010). More information and teaching materials...

• comparing principles of and conditions for (human) cooperation across contexts (Ostrom, 2009; Wilson, Ostrom, & Cox, 2013).  More information and teaching materials...

• mapping the causes and functions of our taste buds to the causes and functions of our "moral taste buds" (Haidt, 2007, 2012). More information and teaching materials...

• comparing evolutionary processes across biological evolution of species, cultural evolution in our species, and the evolution of our own thinking and behavior. More information and teaching materials...

• Glynn, S. M. (2008). Making science concepts meaningful to students: Teaching with analogies. In: S. Mikelskis-Seifert, U. Ringelband, & M. Brückmann (Eds.), Four Decades of Research in Science Education: From Curriculum Development to Quality Improvement (pp. 113–125). Münster, Germany: Waxmann.

• Haidt, J. (2007). The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology. Science, 316(5827), 998–1002. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1137651

• Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York, NY, USA: Pantheon Books.

• Harrison, A. G. & Treagust, D. F. (2006). Teaching and Learning with Analogies: Friend or foe? In: Aubusson, P. J., Harrison, A. G., & Ritchie, S. M. (eds.). Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.  p. 11 - 24. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-4020-3830-5_2 

• Haskell, R. E. (2001). Transfer of Learning. Cognition, Instruction, and Reasoning. Academic Press.

• Ostrom, E. (2009). A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems. Science, 325(5939), 419–422. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1172133

• Seeley, T. D. (2010). Honeybee Democracy. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press.

• Vendetti, M. S., Matlen, B. J., Richland, L. E., & Bunge, S. A. (2015). Analogical Reasoning in the Classroom: Insights From Cognitive Science. Mind, Brain, and Education, 9(2), 100–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12080

• Wilson, D. S., Ostrom, E., & Cox, M. E. (2013). Generalizing the core design principles for the efficacy of groups. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 90, S21–S32. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2012.12.010