How can work-based learning experiences facilitate the transfer of knowledge and skills between contexts?
Project Description
Supporting disrupted workers to transfer their skills to new work might be an effective alternative to reskilling. Yet, little is known about what ‘performance environment’ to ‘performance environment’ transfer looks like in execution. Studying this phenomenon requires looking at environments where workers frequently transfer their existing skills to new types of work. Consulting environments offer this opportunity. They involve individuals who adaptively apply skill sets across different types of projects and manipulate their environments to set themself up for success in each role. Puzzlingly, these environments often involve deeply situated, on-the-job learning while also fostering far learning transfer, thereby bringing to light tensions in the conventional wisdom surrounding learning transfer.
This work involves 60+ interviews and observations across several prominent consulting firms. Through this research, we hope to identify the features and prevalence of situated learning that often occurs in variant work environments that foster ongoing skills transfer. Further, we hope to understand how the transfer of learning is enabled between one job and the next and how it could be enhanced.
Resources
Forthcoming
News
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What’s Missing from a Skills-Only Approach to Workforce Development?
In a new piece for The EvoLLLution, NLL researchers Tessa Forshaw, Rodrigo Madeiros, and Dr. Eileen McGivney argue that Next Level Learning requires changing how workforce challenges are approached, from looking only at skills to a triadic approach that looks at the learner’s skills, identity and context. You can read the full article at this…Continue…
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“Your Network is Your Net Worth”: Revealing the Social Aspects of Transfer of Learning at Work
Learning transfer is the idea that you can apply knowledge learned in an educational setting to a performance context. Traditionally, it was considered a process or outcome that should occur as a result of learning something. More recently, perspectives highlight the role of an individual’s motivation, the educator’s actions, and the contexts’ features in enabling it.…