Transfer of Training and Educational Pseudo-Science

Abstract

The French naturalist, Cuvier, was once asked to pass judgment on the following definition: “A crab is a small red fish that walks backward.” Cuvier replied: “The definition is entirely correct except at three points,—the crab is not a fish, it is not red, and it does not walk backward.” Bagley was in the same predicament a few years ago when he was asked to speak at an N. E. A. meeting on the topic, “Modern Educational Theories and Practical Considerations.” In his characteristically satirical mood he developed the proposition beautifully by showing, step by step, that modern educational theory is not modern, that it is not practical, and above all, that it is not educational. We are reminded of these two incidents by the current conception of the problem of transfer of training which is embodied in the phrase, “The Psychology of Transfer of Training.” If we were disposed to be facetious we might paraphrase Cuvier and follow Bagley's example by showing, first, that there is no psychology,—there are only psychologies, second, that in a literal sense transfer of training is a myth, and, finally that the problem of transfer of training is not, educationally speaking, essentially a psychological problem at all. In fact, it is the aim of this paper to attempt a reinterpretation of the problem of transfer of training in the direction of conceiving of it, not as a scientific and more specifically a psychological problem, but fundamentally, though not entirely as an educational and technological question. Hence the title of the article: “Transfer of Training and Educational Pseudo-Science.”