Transfer of learning in seventh and eighth grade textbook Natural Sciences activities

Abstract

The study was done around the transfer of learning. Its objective was to determine the level of promotion of transfer in the activities stated in the school textbooks, for the seventh and eighth years in Natural Sciences, in 2021. The type of research was descriptive and through multi-methods, quantitative and qualitative elements were integrated to respond to the purpose of the work. The unit of study was school textbooks. Data collection and analysis were carried out according to the transfer of learning model proposed by Haskell (2001). In the educational activities, the presence of the intracontextual level, the simplest one, was mostly observed; this implies that the transfer occurs within the limits of the same context, and the most frequent sub-level is the so-called "context transfer" which means applying what is learned in a context that is not very different. In contrast, the more complex intercontextual level transfer, defined as transfer that occurs between different contexts, represents a minimal fraction of the activities. It is concluded that the activities declared in the Natural Sciences textbooks should promote the transfer of learning equivalent to that developed in the classroom, and, where the transfer of learning is used whose contexts, texts differ substantially from those mobilized in the classroom, which will allow students' learning to move from non-specific transfer to creative transfer.