The Spirit of Transfer and Personality: Motivation, Meaning, and Emotion

CHAPTER 7 The Spirit of Transfer and Personality: Motivation, Meaning, and Emotion Generalization itself will not tell the whole story. To insure transfer, therefore, the atti tude in question must de raised to the plane of an ideal and given an emotional tone. —JOHN R. RYAN, Transfer of Training* To say that students must be motivated to learn or that motivation is impor tant to education is to state the most obvious of educational clichés. Yet, this chapter emphasizes that often what appears to be the most obvious is what we, in fact, don't clearly see or understand except on a most general level. In recent years, personality and dispositional characteristics of learners have been largely ignored in education. Nevertheless, if you ask anyone inside— or outside—of education if they think attitude, motivation, temperament, and character are something they try to foster in their teaching, the answer will be a resounding yes. But this largely automatic answer typically resonates with a hollow ring. In an article in the American Psychological Association Monitor, Susan Moses observes that Despite a decade of earnest educational restructuring across the country, all the na tional statistics still paint the same picture of students' lackluster academic perfor mance. At least in part, that's because 1980's-style education reform often ignored issues of student effort and motivation. .. Many students settle for mediocre per formance because little is expected from them, experts agreed. Schools admittedly of fer few carrots for high achievers.2 More specifically in terms of transfer, Rita Richey in her book, Designing In struction for the Adult Learner, notes that "the question of the role of learner at titudes ... is rarely addressed in the literature."3 I might add that this is es pecially true in relation to transfer. In taking a dispositional approach to transferring knowledge in science learning, Carl Bereiter says that in order for 115 116 7. The Spirit of Transfer and Personality: Motivation, Meaning, and Emotion a principle like gravitation to become fully effective, it needs to be incorpo rated into the way a learner perceives and comprehends the world. That the earth is spherical, for example, should operate automatically and uncon sciously. In a striking turn of phrase that I wish I had thought of, Bereiter notes, "An adult in the modern world should not have to remember that the world is round."4 He concludes that transfer of a concept or principle is only achieved when it's incorporated so thoroughly into one's cognitive system that it becomes a part of one's personality. In this chapter I suggest that significant and general transfer is primarily the consequence of personality and other dispositional characteristics such as at titude, motivation, and feeling. In short, I will suggest that general transfer is the consequence of what I refer to as the spirit of transfer, not simply—nor even significantly—to educational methods, learner strategies, or teaching techniques. Again this is not revelatory. As the epigraph to this chapter shows, the role of emotion in learning was recognized in 1951 to be specifically im portant for transfer. In fact, the role of emotion is as ancient as the very first reflections on learning. Sometimes in history important ideas either get lost, are considered invalid, or are thought to be passé. This has been especially true of the relationship between "personality" characteristics and transfer, which has occurred at least twice in history, first in relation to learning and then in direct relation to transfer. The former can be traced to ancient Greece, the latter to more contemporary times. In this chapter I address the second occasion it was lost, as well as the affective aspect of the first time it was lost. In 1937 the renowned psychologist Gordon Allport5 recognized the rela tionship of personality characteristics and transfer, but his views have since been largely lost or ignored. In this chapter I will resurrect Allport's ideas on the relationship between personality and transfer in support of my approach to general transfer. Virtually all contemporary discussion on instruction and trans fer concerns techniques, strategies, skills, and methods of instruction. These discussions appear to be hard-nosed, no-nonsense approaches to education. They are not. Although instructional technologies are important, from my years of teaching experience and my review of the significant transfer research, I have become convinced that without the transfer "spirit," there is precious little transfer. I consciously use the word precious-, transfer research shows that what ever transfer may be generated by technique, strategy, and method is typically the lowest level of transfer. Moreover, an emphasis on strategies and tech niques are extremely costly, with a cost-benefit ratio typically way out of pro portion to their significance. So what is the transfer spirit and how does it work? THE SPIRIT OF TRANSFER The spirit of transfer refers to a personality attribute; more importantly it is a learner's state of being, not just a set of situational learning strategies or in- The Spirit of Transfer 117 structional implants. Though spirit—as opposed to skill—may seem at first glance a "soft" term, it is in fact a hard-nosed concept. As 1 intend to show in this chapter, the transfer spirit is a psychological, emotional, and motivation al disposition toward deep learning. The transfer spirit, however, is not simply another term for motivation, for the term motivation has come to refer to short- run, task-specific activities. The transfer spirit is more inclusive than that. I specifically selected the term spirit because it means so much more than motivation. A dictionary definition of spirit typically includes (a) an animat ing principle of life, (b) a vital essence, (c) an attitude or dispositional prin ciple that pervades thought, (d) as stirring or prompting one to action, (e) the soul or heart as the seat of feelings, (f ) a vigorous, courageous, or optimistic attitude, (g) a dominant tendency or character, (h) the essence or active prin ciple of a substance. Spirit, as one might suspect, also has a spiritual di mension that originates in what the well-known humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow, called a natural and primitive need to know. We have only to look at the history of science and invention to clearly see that the great scientists and innovators were deeply and emotionally moved to achieve what they did. Some were moved by religion, some by fame, some by money. For some, the quest bordered on obsession. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) the British scientist and mathematician known for his theory of gravitation and who invented differential calculus was an avid alchemist. Both he and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), the German astronomer and mathe matician, were motivated out of deep religious convictions to discover the per fect law and form of God's design among the celestial bodies. lohannes Guten berg (1397-1468) who (arguably) invented movable type, was motivated to invent the printing press by his desire to mass produce the Christian Bible. Now, I'm not suggesting we all should or need to become obsessed—reli giously or otherwise. Rather, I am simply pointing out the deep spirit that typ ically characterizes those who are expert at transfer. The spirit of transfer is not merely a mental module; it's a motivated, affective personality matrix. Calling spirit different names, some educational theorists recognized the necessity of a more fundamental motivation for learning and transfer. The need for a deep-seated disposition to transfer is recognized, for example, in the cot tage industry of teaching critical thinking. In a minority report of an otherwise majority approach to teaching critical thinking, which maintains a skills or cookbook orientation to teaching with techniques and strategies, Carl Brell recognizes that a concept of critical thinking as transfer. calls attention to the fact that teaching for transfer is less a matter of transmitting knowledge, skills, strategies, and principles of thinking (though it is that, too) than it is of fostering in students from the start an in quiring disposition, by which 1 mean a "readiness" to consider the bearing of appar ently discrete frames of reference on one another and toward the construction of a more integrated world view.6 In an optimal sense, the transfer spirit envelopes the whole person. 118 7. The Spirit of Transfer and Personality: Motivation, Meaning, and Emotion Wilbert McKeachie, well known in educational research, also recognizes the significance of motivation for transfer. Referring to the development of achievement and other aspects of motivation for learning, he says, "we might be facilitating the development of important transferable human character istics that would, in turn, increase the likelihood of transfer of cognitive skills."7 David McClelland and his associates have been studying the need for achievement for over twenty years. He defines achievement motivation as an urge to improve or a desire to excel and as a drive to persist in attaining those goals.8 McClelland estimates that only about 10% of the population is high in need for achievement. The well-known researcher, Laura Resnick, also holds a similar view, main taining, "There is good reason to believe that a central aspect of developing higher order cognitive abilities in students is a matter of shaping this kind of disposition to critical thought."9 In his doctoral dissertation, David Mittel- holtz found that prediction for long-term retention of material was best pre dicted for students who had a "deep processing" motive for studying, that is, students who were motivated to understand the material.10 More recently, Peter Gamlin has stressed that the learner must acquire a general strategic orientation to acquiring knowledge, developing a sense of the general nature of the problem, the big picture, so as to de termine what counts as relevant information in problematic or unfamiliar situations.

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