When is a “KO” OK? Capitalizing on existing knowledge structures to facilitate pre-training transfer

Abstract

Abstract Emerging research on training suggests that cognitive and adaptive approaches to training design can facilitate the “pre-training transfer” of trainees' relevant knowledge and skills to the training context. Little empirical work has tested this notion, in part, because of a weak theoretical base and inadequately developed testable hypotheses. This article reviews instructional and cognitive research and proposes that training effectiveness is a function of the correspondence between training treatments (e.g., discovery, remedial, didactic) and the nature of the overlap between trainees' pre-training knowledge structures and training's target knowledge structures. We identify 5 different types of overlap that influence the selection, and subsequent effectiveness, of training treatments: congruence, unrelatedness, conflict, over-generality or over-specificity.