When someone enters the human world, learning will unavoidably become one of their most important life skills. Wayne Weiten claims that learning encompasses the development of habits, personality traits, emotional reactions, and personal preferences in addition to the acquisition of knowledge and abilities. In actuality, learning is the ultimate cause of most human behaviors.
A learning process is supposed to occur in six stages.
- Respond to stimuli.
- Select suitable stimuli by sensory organs.
- Process their meanings through thinking.
- Form new experience or knowledge.
- Apply them in a similar situation.
- Change in behaviour.
The learning process will only come to an end when the behavior modification is maintained.
Each of the eight phases of a learning process has a distinct internal or external action that affects the following phase, according to Gagne’s Learning Process Model.
- Motivation Phase; Expectancy
- Apprehension Phase; Observation-Perception Selection
- Acquisition Phase; Encoding-Prestoring
- Retention Phase: Memory
- Recall Phase: Searching
- Generalization Phase; Transfer
- Performance Phase; Response
- Feedback Phase; Reinforcement
Learning transfer will be discussed in more detail below of those stages.The effectiveness and capacity to adapt experience, knowledge, or abilities that have been retained in long-term memory to a new learning process or similar scenario is referred to as learning transfer in educational psychology.
The concept of learning transfer frequently manifests itself in classroom-based learning activities. For instance, the ability to multiply is used to learn the division operation; the ability to learn mathematics is useful for learning science, particularly physics; the ability to learn language is useful for writing essays and letters, as well as for learning about other disciplines.
Transferring knowledge is, of course, not limited to fresh learning. Furthermore, the learning transfer principle is usually incorporated into the design of the school curriculum. Learning transfer is, after all, a continuous process that occurs both inside and outside of the classroom and affects a person’s potential career.
Positive learning transfer can be broadly categorized into two types: vertical and lateral.
Lateral learning transfer, as defined by Gagne, is the application of learned experience to a comparable circumstance or task of equivalent complexity.
For example, pupils who have mastered new vocabulary will apply it to reading materials like newspaper articles. Conversely, vertical learning transfer refers to an increase in experience that has been acquired to a higher level in order to further enhance the learning process.
Students who have mastered the notion of quadrilateral, for instance, can apply it to the concepts of rhombus, square, rectangle, parallelogram, and kite.
Learning transfer is classified by some psychologists into five primary categories, which will be briefly discussed.
Bilateral transfer
This is the transfer of knowledge and training in areas like physical education. For example, practicing with the left leg can improve the right leg’s ability. Thus, it’s referred to as cross-training.
Mediated transfer
Mediated transfer is the process by which a person who has been exposed to external stimuli and has learned a fixed response uses that response to form a new reaction that falls into the same category as the original stimuli.
For example, it will be beneficial for a student to learn how to carve the human body out of wood after learning how to sketch the human body.
Learning set transfer
It is a method of learning that is typically attained by the experiences gained from several classes in the same subject. Harlow says it can even happen in two different scenarios when further progressive training sessions are done following the initial learning scenario.
This is due to the fact that a person gradually gains experiences from the learning set and acquires new learning skills to apply to higher-level learning scenarios during the progressive training period.
For example, if Social Studies is taught by hands-on experience in examining current events through a historical lens, then the questions and conclusions drawn will not be broadly applicable.
Negative learning transfer
It indicates that prior knowledge impedes the acquisition of new knowledge and vice versa, particularly as a result of habitual, proactive, and retroactive inhibition.
When the initial learning process lessens the retrieval of later learned content, it is known as proactive inhibition and has a forward impact. On the other hand, a reverse effect known as retroactive inhibition occurs when the newly learnt data is less readily retrieved.
When a previous habit prevents a new habit from forming, this is known as habitual inhibition. For example, a pupil who writes with his left hand will become agitated when he practices writing with his right hand.
Zero learning transfer
It’s the same as if there were no learning transfer. This happens in specific new learning scenarios that are dependent on prior knowledge, where there is no learning outcome.
This is especially true when previously learned knowledge or skills are applied incorrectly and have nothing to do with the new learning. For example, learning the division skill using the addition skill is irrelevant.
C Ellis, relying upon his own observation, even established a few principles of learning transfer similar to those mentioned above as follows: -—
- Principle of identical elements
- Principle of sufficient basic training
- Principle of learning set
- Principle of stimuli diversification
- Principle of insight
