standard pitfalls of education that to get result A we teach B and hope it will somehow transter to Al Why not teach A in the first place? Principle Five: Teach knowledge inaction. There is a problem in psychology we call the problem of inert knowledge. For instance, it is commonplace in medical training where students memorize a large body of tacts; they prove unable to martial these facts when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. The remedy for inert knowledge is to teach knowledge in the context of active problem-solving, where the knowledge is put into use as it is being acquired. Principle Six: Teach for transfer. In the past, it has been thought that if you learn some general principle in context A, it would handily transfer to contexts B, C, D, and E. In the last decade, the problem of transfer has emerged as one of the principle difficulties of teaching thinking skills. It turns out that people often do not Sa ean ee ey eee a yeneralize; they do not carry principles over to other contexts. We have to fight against this by teaching tor | transfer. There are two broad ways to do this. One is by varied practice. Very often in instructional contexts the practice is narrow. A few types of problems repeat over and over, and this tends to lead to learning that ts context-bound. If you calculatedly and drastically vary the kinds of problems to which principles are being, applied, you can help generalize the learning. The second method is explicit abstraction and application. That is, students are directly provoked to generalize and apply in odd circumstances what has been taught. Principle Seven: Bear in mind the generality-power trade-off. As mentioned previously, wit is somewhat context specific; but it is not completely context specific. There are some general strategic principles that cut across problem-solving of all sorts. For instance, spending time defining the problem is a time allocation principle that applies in nearly any context and one that is widely neglected, too. In trying to capture both the generality and the context specificity that are there, psychologists have come to speak of a generality-power trade-off. This means that the more general a tactical principle is, the less power it has in any one context. If you want math scores and math scores alone to go up, then you teach to the task, focusing on general and specific tactics that apply to mathematics. Some of them do not apply in general. If you want gains on a broad front, you may teach tactics of general problem-solving; and you will find gains on a broad front, but modest ones. This trade- off between generality and power has to be kept in mind when you make choices between such options as a stand-alone course which is aimed at affecting change over a wide range of subject matters versus integrating the teaching of thinking skills into a particular subject matter. Let me review. "What is wit made of?" and "How does it get into your head?" | have argued that, according to recent experiments, it is quite possible to teach thinking skills. And I have urged that we, in fact, know some general principles to guide the teaching of thinking skills both in stand-alone courses and in subject matter contexts. The principles again were: foster a tactical attitude, make tactics explicit, teach managerial strategies as well as particular strategies, teach to the task, teach knowledge in action, teach for transfer, and bear in mind the generality-power trade-off in your instructional planning. I find it very encouraging that at this point in time we have even those broad principles to guide such efforts. Because, as broad as they are, those principles do argue against a number o! approaches to the fostering ot thinking, skills that have been taken in the past. I am encouraged by the notion that we may be able to engineer such instruction. =o DOUGLAS COLLEGE David Perkins Harvard University ARCHIVES Edited from his oral presentation at the 1985 AAHE National Conference. For further information, contact the author at Harvard University, 315 Longfellow Hall, Appian Way. Cambridge, MA 02138. Suanne D Roueche, Editor October 4, 1935, Vol. VIL No. 2° INNOVATION ABSTRACTS is a publication of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, EDB 348, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, (512) 471-7545. Subscriptions are available to nonconsortium members for $35 per year. Funding in part by the W. K Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation. Issued weekly when classes are in session during fall and spring terms and monthly during the summer © The University of Texas at Austin, 1985 Further duplication is permitted only by MEMBER institutions for ther own personnel ISSN O199- 1G6'"