Review #4 page 1 Kevin D. McMahonStudent ID#: 78513SED 600March 27, 2007Review #4: Conference"It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish."~ Johann Wolfgang von GoetheConferenceOn January 19th, 2007 I attended a conference at the AirTel Motel sponsored by District 1 of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The conference focused on Gifted Instruction in Secondary Science. Dr. Sandra Kaplan, from the Department of Education,University of Southern California, was the principal presenter. She began her presentation with a quote from the February, 2006 edition of the Harvard Business Review:“To have knowledge but without being able to use it in new and different ways is akin to not having knowledge at all.”Kaplan proceeded to explain that the conference was not about content, but process; and this process, put simply, was to facilitate students moving from “not knowing” toReview #4 page 2 “knowing.” To accomplish this task, Kaplan promoted a “Bridge Curriculum” which would allow the teacher to transport the student from the region of unknowing to knowing. She illustrated this processes by the use of a handout which is reproduced on the following page.This paper will focus on one aspect of the “Bridge,” that is, the “Connect” region. Kaplan defined “connection” as the process by which the “student connects content to something outside the specific domain.” She further explained that “this is where transferoccurs” which is necessary for knowledge to be used “in new and different ways.” Dr. Kaplan provided her audience with an interesting overview of transfer techniques that could be used in the classroom, but she did not describe any particular research that wasReview #4 page 3 done in this area. Consequently, the rest of this paper will assess research on transfer using design based science instruction that was performed by David Fortus and his colleagues from the University of Michigan (Fortus, 2005).IntroductionIn the introduction of their research report, Design-based Science and Real-WorldProblem-Solving, Fortus, et. al., lay out what they believe is the cause of the poor transference between academic skills to the “real world,” that is the world outside of the academic setting. They state,School science has been traditionally built around well-defined problems, such as predicting an ideal projectile’s trajectory or calculating how much hydrogen is released by the decomposition ofa given amount of water. (Fortus, 2005, p.856)However, real world problems and are ill-defined and, similarly, real-world science does not follow set protocols that lead to “unerringly to scientific knowledge.” (Fortus, 2005, p.855,856). The purpose of their research they stated as follows:Our response to the potential problem of limited transfer of learning from school science to everyday settings is design-based (DBS), an inquiry-based science pedagogy in which new scientific knowledge and problem-solving skills are constructed in the contextof design artifacts. (Fortus, 2005, p.856)Review #4 page 4 MethodThe study was conducted over a period of 11 weeks. One hundred and forty-nine 9th and 10th graders participated in the study. The study was conducted in a suburban school consisting of 87% White, 10% Hispanic, 2% Black, and 1% Asian. Two teachers participated in the study; one had two years of teacher experience, the other had six. The DBS task presented to the students was How do I design a structure for extreme environmental conditions? The instructional unit was conducted so as to emphasize inquiry learning; explicit instruction was minimize. It was conducted in a cyclical fashion as illustrated below.Review #4 page 5 Prior to the start of the DBS students were given a pre-test. After the completion of the DBS task they were given a post-test. Three days after the post-test the students were given a Transfer task to design and build a kite that could fly a mile high. During the transfer task students could use any source they chose including the Web, hobby shops, etc. The students were to submit a solution which consisted of (1) a technical drawing, (2) concept drawing, (3) 3D model, (4) justification, and (5) description of the steps they went through in the design and building of their model. The researchers conducted this part of the project.ResultsThe Transfer tasks were coded according to standards taken from the Applied Learning recommended by the New Standards Project (NCEE, 1997) which are summarized below:“Applied Learning is about the capabilities people need to be productive members of society, as individuals who apply the knowledge gained in school and elsewhere to analyze problems and propose solutions.” (NCEE, 1997:3)1. Identify all the factors and variables that need to be considered.2. Gather relevant information.3. Develop a range of options.4. Selected one design option to pursue and justified this choice with reference to functional, esthetic, scientific or otherReview #4 page 6 considerations.5. Used appropriate conventions to represent the design.6. Established criteria for judging the success of the design.The scores students received for the Transfer task were then correlated to their pre and post-test with the following assumption in mind:If the knowledge constructed during instruction supported the solution of a transfer task, we should expect the knowledge of the subjects after the intervention to be more highly correlated with success on the transfer task than their knowledge before the intervention. (Fortus, 2005 p.865)The researchers obtained the following results:The researchers’ interpretation of the graph was as follows:“…the correlation between the knowledge of the students after the curriculum enactment and the transfer task is stronger than that before the curriculum enactment. We believe this provides evidence that transfer occurred, that the scientific knowledge that was constructed between pre-test and post-test supported the solution of the transfer task. (Fortus, 2005, p.871)Review #4 page 7 DiscussionAlthough the researchers concluded that there was indeed a correlation between the DBS task and the Transfer task an r2 value of 0.20 is suggestive of very little to negligible correlation. The researchers acknowledge the small value of r2 but justified their conclusion by making an odd