Hugging and Bridging for Transfer¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Perkins and Salomon's research on transfer of learning identified two complementary teacher strategies for promoting positive transfer (Souza, 2016). Hugging encourages transfer by incorporating similarities between the learning situation and the future situations in which the learning might be used — the learning experience "hugs" its eventual application closely. Bridging encourages transfer by helping students find connections between what they already know and new concepts, and by abstracting existing knowledge so it generalizes — building a "bridge" across situations that are not superficially similar. Transfer itself is less a deliberate act by the learner than a product of the learning environment, which makes the teacher, as part of that environment, a direct instrument of transfer — for better or worse (Souza, 2016).

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A clear sense of the target future situation(s) the learning is meant to transfer to, so hugging techniques can be built around genuine similarity rather than superficial resemblance
• Time for students to engage in abstraction (analogy-building, principle-seeking) rather than only practicing the surface task

Constraints¶

• Hugging without bridging risks producing only near transfer (performance limited to closely similar situations); bridging without any grounded, concrete practice risks abstraction with nothing for students to anchor it to

Target Learners¶

• Learners preparing to apply a skill or concept in a substantially different context from the one in which they learned it (far transfer), where hugging and bridging are both especially load-bearing

Target Learning Goals¶

• Positive transfer of knowledge or skill to new tasks, situations, or problems, as covered generally in Transfer of Learning

Instructions¶

1. Hugging — Build the learning experience to resemble its eventual use context as closely as possible. Methods include simulation games, mental practice (rehearsing performance in the target context), and contingency learning (practicing under conditions that vary the way the target situation will vary).
2. Bridging — Help students find connections between what they are learning and what they already know, and support them in abstracting general principles from specific instances. Methods include brainstorming connections, developing analogies and metaphors, and prompting metacognitive reflection on what makes the current problem similar to others.

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

• After learning to solve a certain class of algebra problems, a teacher has students brainstorm (bridging) other domains where the same underlying structure appears, while also practicing the skill under conditions that mimic a real assessment's time pressure and format (hugging).

Key Sources¶

• Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1992). Transfer of learning. International Encyclopedia of Education.
• Souza, D. A. (2016). How the brain learns (5th ed.). Corwin Press.
• Arduini-Van Hoose, N. (2020). Teacher's perspectives on learning. In Educational psychology. Retrieved from https://edpsych.pressbooks.sunycreate.cloud. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.