Abstract
Prior research has established that while the use of concrete, familiar examples can provide many important benefits for learning, it is also associated with some serious disadvantages, particularly in learners’ ability to recognize and transfer their knowledge to new analogous situations. However, it is not immediately clear whether this pattern would hold in real world educational contexts, in which the role of such examples in student engagement and ease of processing might be of enough importance to overshadow any potential negative impact. We conducted two experiments in which curriculum-relevant material was presented in natural classroom environments, first with college undergraduates and then with middle-school students. All students in each study received the same relevant content, but the degree of contextualization in these materials was varied between students. In both studies, we found that greater contextualization was associated with poorer transfer performance. We interpret these results as reflecting a greater degree of embeddedness for the knowledge acquired from richer, more concrete materials, such that the underlying principles are represented in a less abstract and generalizable form.
Highlights
Educators at all levels are frequently encouraged to incorporate concrete, meaningful, real-world examples into their lessons (e.g., Rivet and Krajcik, 2008)
Our primary interest in this study was in the effects of contextualization on transfer to new domains
We examined the interactions between the training and test domain, and how these were influenced by the varied contextual factors
Summary
Educators at all levels are frequently encouraged to incorporate concrete, meaningful, real-world examples into their lessons (e.g., Rivet and Krajcik, 2008). This advice probably seems like a truism to most teachers. When LeFevre and Dixon (1986) gave participants a task in Context in Instructional Examples which the verbal instructions and the concrete instructional example were inconsistent with one another, over 90% of the participants followed the example while disregarding the instructions This suggests a strong preference for the processing of concrete, instantiated information ( see Anderson et al, 1984; Ross, 1987). It is no surprise that meaningful, concrete examples are encouraged in pedagogy—they are typically associated with substantial improvements in comprehension, memory, and reasoning
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
