Transfer of Learning: The Missing Ingredient

The achievement scores of the Lebanese students that participated in the international exams such as TIMSS and PISA are unsatisfactory and they are not getting better with time. As a matter of fact, this is the case for many countries in the MENA region. In order to address this challenge, a precursor is to identify the main root causes for such a performance. For this purpose, this study aimed at examining whether a sample of Grade 8 students are able to demonstrate transfer of learning in the context of math and science. The findings showed that the examined students couldn’t answer the questions that require conceptual understanding or higher-order thinking; thus they couldn’t practice transfer of learning. An implication for this study is that transfer of learning is not something that happens by coincidence nor it’s something that can be overlooked.

The achievement scores of the Lebanese students that participated in the international exams such as TIMSS and PISA are unsatisfactory and they are not getting better with time. As a matter of fact, this is the case for many countries in the MENA region. In order to address this challenge, a precursor is to identify the main root causes for such a performance. For this purpose, this study aimed at examining whether a sample of Grade 8 students are able to demonstrate transfer of learning in the context of math and science. The findings showed that the examined students couldn’t answer the questions that require conceptual understanding or higher-order thinking; thus they couldn’t practice transfer of learning. An implication for this study is that transfer of learning is not something that happens by coincidence nor it’s something that can be overlooked.