Problem-Solving Training - Does It Transfer?
Quick note. The idea that problem-solving, as a general skill set, is something we should train people in is severely challanged by a body of research that suggests that training in problem-solving does NOT transfer well to other tasks and contexts. In other words, there is the possibility that you might get gains from training in a particular domain, context or content area, and not get gains in any others but the one you trained “in”.
I remember some of this research from the old days, and did some searching since problem-solving has been a major research area for cognitive science for at least two decades.
…but the jury is still out. It may be that training in general problem solving simply is NOT worth the investment at all.
Here’s just a brief, and not necessarily representative quote:
Studies by Hayes and Simon (1977) and Pea and Kurland (1984) suggest that training on one version of a logical problem has little or any effect on solving an isomorphic version, represented differently. Pressley et al. (1987), very pessimistically, state that the case of generalizable, context-independent skills and strategies that can be trained in one context and transferred to other domains is more a matter of wishful thinking than hard empirical evidence.
http://www.indiana.edu/~educr795/prop5.html for the research study, and the short lit. review.