Transfer of skills/learning

Consider for a moment the varied terrains of adult numeracy learning and/or performance.

Perhaps the most pressing issues in adult numeracy education is that of the domains in which adult numeracy learning and/or performance take place. They range from the highly monomorphic, institutionalised settings where adults to some extent recapitulate the learning of school mathematics, to the highly polymorphic terrains of everyday life or the workplace.

The relationship between these (if we construct them on a continuum) is highly problematic in terms of the so-called transfer of “skills”. Part of the discourse (in New Zealand) which addresses the disjunctures among them involves the equally problematic term “embedding”.

These varied terrains also raise critical issues with regard to how the numeracy performance of adults is assessed.

Related continuums might be those of:
formal learning/performance <<>> informal learning/performance

institutionalized learning/performance <<>> de-institutionalized learning/performance

exchange value <<>> use value (see Coben, 2002).

In 2010, Tine Wedege put out an important paper which problematizes the relationship between school mathematics and work mathematics.




Coben, D. (2002). Use value and exchange value in discursive domains of adult numeracy teaching. Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 11(2), 25-35.