Creating a culture of transfer in our schools

This week I have been thinking a lot about the concept of knowledge and skills transfer in school students, and how we, as librarians can help to facilitate a "culture of transfer" in our libraries, moreover, in our entire school.

I read an article this week by James Herring called Assumptions, Information Literacy and Transfer in High Schools. One line, in particular really caught my attention. He explains, and from my experience this seems exactly right, that "students...regard the school as a place where they do what teachers ask them to do, and more importantly, only do what teachers ask of them." I see this quite often. Student do not want go beyond the scope of the assignment instructions, they do not want to search for an answer in a text that isn't on a pre-provided list and they do not easily transfer information between one subject and the next without being told to do so.

Transfer is not an innate skill. In fact, as children our brains are pre-programmed to compartmentalize things. We build schemas for how to act in different situations. IE:quiet at the library but loud at a birthday party, raise my hand in school but not at home. It is only natural that this process continues as we grow. Students develop the mindset that the information they learn from the teacher during Social Studies class is only useful for them in Social Studies. Science is only useful for a science test, or paper, and wouldn't be helpful in a Language Arts or Math Class.

Transfer is a learned skill. It is something that needs to be facilitated in all classrooms, but we can start in the library. If we build our library curriculum around projects and subjects that the students are doing in their regular classrooms we can encourage the transfer of subject specific information to the library setting. If we involve their teachers in the lessons on information literacy we can, hopefully, encourage that skill beyond the library setting too.

Reinforcement is key. Just as with any skill, reinforcement is a huge part of fluency. If you don't practice, the skill becomes weaker and weaker until it is lost. Students need to have information literacy skills reinforced across their curriculum. We can help facilitate that by collaborating with teachers and helping them to understand what exactly information literacy means and why it is beneficial for them to incorporate...in short, why it needs to be part of their job too, and not just the librarians'. We can work with teachers across the grade level curriculum to create research projects that will encompass a variety of subject areas in order to facilitate transfer on multiple levels.

Transfer is a skill that needs to be taught and practiced and information literacy is a a skill that is worthless without the ability to transfer it to all situations. Through careful selection of projects and reinforcement of the skill cross-curriculum we can ensure that students develop the information literacy skill that they will need to be successful in all of their future academic endeavors.