Teachers are very good at helping their students to become masters of their subjects. We expect this. If GPCC teachers did not achieve this, then our school probably wouldn’t be around for very much longer. However, what they do struggle with is a process called transfer. Transfer is when we take a piece of learning from a subject and see if we can apply it to something entirely new. For example, a student takes their learning about rhyme and metre in English poetry and then transfers it to a different context by writing a song. This may seem intuitive in writing, but students often struggle to see the connections between subjects. Transfer is one of the holy grails of education and one we have been trying to find for many decades. However, I think we may be trying to solve it the wrong way. You see, transfer is not necessarily a problem to be solved in classrooms, rather it can be solved in the family home.

I think that part of the transfer problem can be solved around the dinner table, away from the classroom and away from the rigours of ‘subjects’.

Many parents are in the routine of asking their children what they learned at school today. I do. We get to engage with our kids and get a taste of their day. But let’s see if we can make this discussion more useful to a student’s learning in general. Let’s see if we can get some transfer going. How about following up with, “how does your learning about x apply to your everyday world?” Now, this is a very different kind of family chat. Your child may struggle at first, but with some prompting, repetition, and practice, fascinating connections can be made. We have gone from talking about what a child has learned to how that learning works and applies to a different context: we have achieved, at least in a little way, transfer.

I encourage parents to give it a go. Ask that extra follow-up question and see where your evening of discussion takes you.