A Study on Transfer in Elementary School Biology

Abstract

Most recent studies on cognitive psychology suggest the difficulty of promoting transfer. In our previous studies, the results showed that students tended to under-generate biological contents and that they were greatly influenced by the similarity in teaching materials. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teaching strategy on several situations in the elementary school biology class. First, we examined the effect of teaching by using a variety of materials, because teachers use many teaching materials for the promotion of transfer. We asked fifth and sixth graders some questions about attribution, using the same method as Carey did in 1985. As a result, the use of a variety of materials had no effect on transfer for students who are unable to make category-based inferences. Second, we examined the effect of one teaching strategy on the learning of fertilization in the fifth grade. Our teaching strategy was to make students understand that teaching materials and living things belonged to the same category. As a result, the number of students who were able to make category-based inferences increased with this teaching strategy, indicating that this teaching strategy promotes transfer.