The Role of Frame Analysis in Enhancing the Transfer of Knowledge

What do Dolly Parton, Mozart, and Babe Ruth have in common? The answer depends on what frame you have. With three separate frames, you find that they all have something in common with each other. The ability to use these frames to find commonalities has great implications for education.

Good educators try to teach abstract skills that generalize (transfer) over a wide range of situations. The thrust of this paper is to point out how transfer can be enhanced by use of framing techniques. The article contains much discussion of issues related to frame analysis, including schemas, encoding, and decoding.