The purpose of this proposal is to systematically investigate how instruction can be designed to encourage students to transfer what they have learned from one context to other contexts. The research is based on the premise that it is not just the content of what students learn that matters for transfer, but also how learning contexts are framed, which may be in a more expansive or bounded manner. The hypothesis is that contexts framed expansively are more likely to support transfer-of-learning because they encourage students to orient to current learning activities as opportunities to join larger intellectual conversations that extend across time, places, topics, and people. High school biology students will participate in a series of experiments to systematically test the extent to which different aspects of expansively framed instruction support the transfer of knowledge and practices from one-on-one tutoring about the cardiovascular system to learning about the respiratory system and other science topics. A parallel series of comparative studies will then be conducted in high school biology classes to investigate how to best incorporate expansive framing into the classroom to have the most powerful effects on transfer. This research is important because if instruction can be modified to better promote transfer, then science education will have a much greater impact on students? lives. Too often students learn science ideas in relative isolation, failing to connect the ideas or grasp the key concepts that could serve them in their future schooling, careers, and as scientifically literate citizens. Further, if this work is successful, it can support the development of curriculum units and teacher training materials that will allow these methods to make a difference for an increasingly wide range of students.
This research investigated "expansive framing" as a mechanism for making students more likely to transfer what they have learned to new situations. At the heart of this research is the idea that it is not just the content of what students learn that matters, but also the ways that the contexts in which students learn that content are framed. This research investigated the hypothesis that learning contexts framed expansively are more likely to foster transfer-of-learning than those framed in a bounded manner. Learning contexts that are framed expansively encourage students to see current learning activities as extending across time, places, topics, and people, as well as including learners as active participants. In contrast, bounded framings restrict students’ focus to narrowly defined, separate topics and their learning as passive and disconnected from other learners. In a series of tutoring experiments and case studies of classroom instruction, this research tested this framing hypothesis and then systematically unpacked its elements in an attempt to understand how each contributes to transfer. The studies were conducted with high school biology students, both in a classroom setting that was framed expansively and in tutoring sessions with tightly controlled scripts. The classroom study was conducted in the classroom of an award-winning high school biology teacher whose teaching practice exemplified our theoretical framework of expansive framing. This class reflected the socioeconomic and cultural diversity of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We collected audio and video data in this teacher’s classroom throughout an entire instruction year, and measured student learning and transfer of concepts related to osmosis and diffusion in human, animal, and plant systems. We used surveys and interviews to measure student awareness of and alignment with their teacher’s expansive framing. We found that students who had higher scores on our assessments of transfer also perceived greater relevance of their biology class to their future. Additionally, those students who most perceived themselves as playing an active and accountable role in generating biology knowledge also retained the most knowledge about osmosis and diffusion after nearly two years. The tutoring study built on research that had shown that framing of tutoring sessions as expansive rather than bounded significantly improved transfer. This study was designed to disentangle the effects of framing of setting (relevance across times, places, and people) and framing of student role (as either active authors or passive recipients of knowledge). Students learned about the circulatory system during the first of two consecutive days of tutoring. Then, during the second day, students had opportunities to transfer what they learned to the respiratory system, real-life health scenarios, and other science topics. Instruction on both days followed one of four scripts that linguistically framed the tutoring sessions as: (1) expansive role/expansive setting; (2) expansive role/bounded setting; (3) bounded role/expansive setting; or (4) bounded role/bounded setting. We used assessments to measure student knowledge, learning, and transfer, and surveys for their perceptions of the tutor’s framing and their own alignment with it. We found that framing of role had more effect on transfer than framing of setting. Students in the bounded role conditions (3 and 4 above) tended to transfer conceptual principles more to similar situations, while students in the expansive role conditions (1 and 2 above) tended to transfer more to markedly different situations. Additionally, student alignment with the expansive framing of role is also associated with an increase in transfer. The intellectual merit of this research centers on the collection of empirical evidence about particular ways that the framing of learning contexts can promote or inhibit transfer. Perhaps our strongest contribution is the finding of a positive relationship between student alignment with expansive framing and transfer. It highlights the importance of each student’s active role in incorporating an expansive framing in his or her thinking. The broader impacts of this research are numerous, and include the important learning opportunities provided for undergraduates, doctoral students, and science teachers though their participation in the research. The theoretical advances, empirical findings, and instruments developed to measure different aspects of transfer have been shared at presentations at the annual conferences of the: American Educational Research Association, International Society of the Learning Sciences, and National Association of Research in Science Teaching. These advances will continue to be disseminated widely through the publication of two manuscripts focused on expansive framing in a classroom setting. This research may help guide teachers in considering how, simply through their use of language, they may contribute to student learning not only within their classroom but also throughout life. Ultimately, the broadest and most important impacts of this research will be on students and their own perceptions of their own learning.
