Education Week – Sarah D. Sparks
“Mathematics is the language of science, the foundation of engineering, the power switch for new technology—but students often struggle to transfer their understanding of math concepts to practical application in other STEM subjects. Researchers at the Association of Psychological Science conference here last month discussed new findings on ways to help students link their math learning to science, technology, and engineering. “Looking at the longer history of transfer of knowledge, the research shows that if you have students pull a general concept out of a combination of specific examples and give multiple different examples, it increases transfer of that concept to new examples,” said Holly A. Taylor, a psychology professor at Tufts University, in Medford, Mass. “One reason that STEM concepts are difficult to transfer is because they are siloed. Although I believe that there is change afoot in this regard,” she said, because new mathematics and science standards in most states are focused more on underlying processes than on learning just facts.”(more)