Transfer of Knowledge

Transfer of Knowledge is the most significant outcome goal of the the CBCI model. When students have a deep understanding of the concepts and Big Ideas of the unit, they should ideally be able to transfer their learning to a novel situation and demonstrate their understanding. The summative task IS this novel situation and asks students to transfer their knowledge as they create, solve or respond. The very nature of conceptual understanding is that students will see the expansiveness of the concept as they continue to learn.

Transfer is the ultimate goal. As Stern, Lauriault and Ferraro (2017) state "We ultimately want students to use their conceptual understanding to understand and transform their world. That means these understandings cannot be inert knowledge, but rather keys to unlocking new situations. If that is our goal, our assessments need to provide insight on our progress toward students transferring their understanding to new situations."

Looking at the figure below, Stern explains that throughout a unit students move from an academic, low-road transfer of learning to more complex, high-road, real-world transfer of learning.

For this particular unit, students were all given a letter inviting the Grade 2's to be architects and the Grade 3s to be urban or rural planners for a fictional country. Students had to transfer all their knowledge and create a country with its habitats.