Project Four - Contextual Transfer

Many business’s send work colleagues out on adventure programmes in the hope that when they come back to the work place they work better together, a more cohesive team you could say. But do the skills they have learnt in the outdoors are they transferable in the work place? Not only the work place but students also, what they learn in the outdoors is this transferable in the classroom?

Can i transfer this skill to this situation let me look 

There are a number of definitions for transfer Thorndike and Woodworth, (1901) state that soft skill transfer or the transfer of learning is the transfer of skills from one context to another. Transfer in an outdoor setting is known as the integration of learning from the learning from the adventure programme into the participant’s real life Priest and Gass (1997)

Priest and Gass (1997) state that Transfer can take place in three differ ways.

1.      Specific - An individual learning skills that can be transferred into another setting

2.      Nonspecific - Learning which can then be applied to differed situations

3.      Metaphoric - A certain activity an individual has to face which is out of the norm for an individual but there are underling skill that are similar to everyday tasks

However the research to validate Priest and Gass (1997) work is somewhat lacking. I have obviously adopted soft skills, but I myself have never actually taken part in workplace training or an adventure programme as I have still been in education. I have obviously been facilitating adventure week programmes but I doubt that a week is going to have any major effects. I feel a longer period of time within a programme would aid the transfer. I am rather annoyed I did not in fact think about this transfer of learning when I was on placement, as my placement provides a one month programme for trident school. I believe a follow up on the students that took part in that adventure programme would be highly beneficial to see if transfer did occur into their everyday life. As Sibthorps and Furman 2010 in fact reviewed a 14 day backpacking programme 3 months after the course they found that there was an improvement in the interaction between the groups and the way that they applied themselves and skills to their school work. Also other work by Rhodes & Martin (2014) found that after a 6-12 day programme that 4 months after participants were able to deal with challenging tasks and were positive thinking. Reports from participants also stated that there was positive impact on home life. Colleagues were also expressed that participants who underwent the programme noticed that they were more positive and understood others better.

Learning to abseil someone of a rock will this transfer to everyday life? 

I feel that after watching and facilitating a programme for one month I felt that soft skills within the school as a group had changed, they listened to each other at a better level, there were less arguments when undergoing overnight residentials and they were able to share ideas between each other instead of trying to just get their point across. I believe that undergoing post review 3-4 months after the programme there may have been similarities in results with other findings. I feel overall we will never truly be able to understand the transfer it needs to be tested for a much longer period. My personal belief it is down to the individual if someone applies what they learnt from an adventure programme and taken it into the work place or into school or their everyday life it’s because they have wanted to. They have had a lightbulb movement and have made a choice to maybe be better at communicating with someone, or being more positive about situations etc.  I highly doubt week programme would do that but I do feel longer programmes like a month or regular programs could in fact aid this transfer.  

References:

Priest, S. and Gass, M.A. (1997). Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Rhodes, H. M., & Martin, A. J. (2014). Behavior Change After Adventure Education Courses: Do Work Colleagues Notice?. Journal of Experiential Learning, 265-284.

Sibthorp, J., Furman, N., Paisley, K., Gookin, J., & Schumann, S. (2011). Mechanisms of Learning Transfer in Adventure Education: Qualitative results from the NOLS transfer survey. Journal of Experiential Learning, 109-126.

Thorndike, E.L. and Woodworth, R.S. (1901). The influence of improvements in one mental function upon the efficiency of other functions. Psychological Review 8, pp. 247-261.