Kelly, I do think that the ability to navigate levels is important (was just reading a paper to that topic), and it’s part of truly ‘situating’ thinking. Thanks for weighing in with that perspective.

I will not bore you all with the nuances…but part of translating prose poetry, for example, is understanding the situated or the “small picture” and the higher-order concerns or the “larger picture”: the poet’s life, background; the political, social, artistic, etc. climate that shaped the poem; the intricacies and logic of the source language; the affordances and constraints of the genre; the poet’s style and body of work; and the many other conditions, complexities, etc.). The literary translator must also consider all of these factors, elements, or otherwise of the target language, culture, reader(s), and so on.

In short, translation proper is concerned with the various layers and types of contexts and with constructing bridges between them. These parallels to learning, teaching, and design may not seem salient (mostly due to my poor explication here), but I hope the introduction of this topic provides some food for thought. ~Kelly

Christine, I look at the work of David Jonassen, who found better transfer and retention from problem-based learning. Also the work of Bransford et al on anchored cognition. I haven’t read ‘the unschooled mind’, but I think it has to do with the facilitation of transfer out of practical experiences (and managing cognitive load). I think you want to both develop the principles/models, but also support transferring them to concrete problems. Also, choosing appropriate contexts to facilitate appropriate transfer. Some folks (e.g. those self-selected to be engineers?) may be able to succeed because they’re good at transferring to concrete contexts, but it’s not the way to bet.