The Illusion of Transfer: Why Skills Don’t Travel Without Content

Usually people think that as long as you teach students skills, they should be able to transfer it to other subjects with ease. While this might sound intuitive, this actually goes against what cognitive science tells us about how people learn. If we want students to perform well in high-order thinking tasks, students first need a strong foundation of knowledge. Without that foundation, there is nothing to think deeply about. In other words, skills and content go hand in hand. 

Let me explain this with an analogy.

A Simple Analogy: Doctors, Lawyers, and the Limits of Skill Transfer

Would you say that doctors and lawyers have high-order thinking skills? Most people would agree they do. Now consider this: would you allow a lawyer to examine you when you’re sick? I’m willing to bet the answer is no. Why? Because you intuitively understand that medicine is not their area of expertise. Even though lawyers possess higher-order thinking skills, you know those skills do not automatically transfer to the field of medicine. It would make more sense to be seen by a doctor.

The same logic applies in reverse. Would you hire a doctor to represent you in a court of law? Probably not. It would make more sense to hire a lawyer instead.

That’s because skills are closely connected to what you know. To think like an expert, you need a strong understanding of specific content. That’s why future lawyers attend law school and pass the bar exam. That’s why future doctors go to medical school and get licensed. These steps help them build the knowledge they need to think critically in their careers.

It’s also important to note that even within these professions, specialization matters. Some lawyers specialize in criminal or personal injury law, while some doctors focus on cardiology or neurology. Being an expert in one area doesn’t mean you’re an expert in another. Mastery takes both knowledge and skills within a specific domain. Specialties exist for a reason.

So why do we assume that in K–12 education, students can transfer skills across different subjects without first building a strong foundation of knowledge? Educational trends often overemphasize “critical thinking,” “problem-solving,” and “21st-century skills” as if they can be taught in isolation. Here are a few examples:

• Reading comprehension skills are taught in isolation with students practicing how to “find the main idea” or “make inferences” using random passages without any background knowledge.
• Students are asked to write argumentative essays on topics they’ve just been introduced to without enough content knowledge to construct a meaningful claim.
• Students are expected to engage in scientific inquiry without first understanding the basic science concepts or lab procedures.

In reality though, these skills only develop meaningfully when paired with content. Without a strong foundation of knowledge, students have nothing to think critically about. To better understand why this is the case, let’s take a look at a few studies.

What Cognitive Science Says About Transferring Skills

Research shows that transferring skills from one situation to another is much more difficult than it seems.

A study conducted by Carraher and colleagues (1985) found that children who work as street vendors in Brazil demonstrate superior mathematical performance in real-life, context-rich situations (like selling coconuts or lemons) compared to traditional school-style math problems.¹ This was observed even when both involve the same numbers and operations. For example, when children solved problems in an informal context, such as street selling, they performed exceptionally well, correctly answering 98.2% of the problems. However, when faced with school-type word problems, their accuracy dropped to 73.7%. Performance declined even further on context-free math problems, with only 36.8% answered correctly.

A similar phenomenon can also be seen in another study conducted by Gick & Holyoak (1980). They asked college students to read the following story:²

“A dictator ruled a small country from a strong fortress. The fortress was situated in the middle of the country, surrounded by villages and farmlands. Many roads led to the fortress through the countryside. A rebel general vowed to capture the fortress. The general knew that if his entire army could attack the fortress at once, it could be captured. But a spy reported that the dictator had planted mines on each of the roads. The mines were set so that small groups of men could pass over them safely, but any large force would detonate them. “

The story also included a solution:

“Therefore, the general divided his army into small groups and dispatched each group to a different road. Each group traveled down a different road, and at a prearranged time, all the groups converged on the fortress. In this way, the general captured the fortress.”

Then the experimenter gave them the following problem:

“Suppose you are a doctor faced with a patient who has a malignant tumor in his stomach. It is impossible to operate on the patient, but unless the tumor is destroyed the patient will die. There is a kind of ray that can be used to destroy the tumor. If the rays reach the tumor all at once at a sufficiently high intensity, the tumor will be destroyed. Unfortunately, at this intensity the healthy tissue that the rays pass through on the way to the tumor will also be destroyed. At lower intensities the rays are harmless to healthy tissue, but they will not affect the tumor either. What type of procedure might be used to destroy the tumor with the rays, and at the same time avoid destroying the healthy tissue?”

The solution to the radiation problem is similar to the one found in the military story: instead of using one strong ray, send several weak rays from different directions. Each weak ray is safe for healthy tissue, but when they all meet at the tumor, they combine to destroy it. Even though participants had just learned this idea from the military story, only 20% were able to use it in the new problem.

This shows that learning a skill in one context does not guarantee that someone will recognize and apply that same skill in a different context. This difficulty in transfer suggests that skills and knowledge are deeply embedded in the specific situations in which they are learned.

Classroom Implications

With that being said, high-order thinking skills should not be taught in isolation. If we want students to engage in higher-order thinking, we must first make sure they have the foundational knowledge to do so. Without a solid foundation of knowledge, students don’t have the content needed to think critically.

One of the most effective and research-backed ways to build that foundational knowledge is through direct instruction. Direct instruction involves clearly explaining concepts, modeling thinking processes, guiding practice, and gradually releasing responsibility to students. It is often misunderstood as rote memorization or passive learning. But when done well, it is highly interactive and responsive to students’ needs.

This is strongly supported by Project Follow Through, the largest and longest-running educational study in U.S. history.³ The project evaluated a variety of instructional models across thousands of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Direct instruction produced the strongest results in basic academic skills, problem-solving skills, and self-esteem. This challenges the notion that direct teaching stifles creativity or deep thinking. In reality, it equips students with the content they need for critical thinking and problem-solving.

If we want students to develop higher-order thinking skills, we must start by building their knowledge. The most effective way to do this is through high-quality direct instruction. Once students have a solid foundation of content knowledge, they are better equipped to think critically and apply what they’ve learned in new situations, such as during inquiry-based activities.

It’s important to remember that skills don’t automatically transfer across subjects. Learning is highly content-dependent.⁴ If you want students to reason effectively during lab experiments, explicitly teach the science concepts before students pick up the glassware. If you want students to construct strong arguments in a historical debate, equip them with the historical narrative and go over the strategies of argumentation. Skills must be taught in the specific contexts where they will be used. If skills are taught in isolation, we risk compromising not only student learning but also their ability to think critically.

References:

1. Carraher, T. N., Carraher, D. W., & Schliemann, A. D. (1985). Mathematics in the streets and in schools. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3(1), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1985.tb00951.x ↩︎
2. Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12(3), 306–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(80)90013-4 ↩︎
3. National Institute for Direct Instruction. (n.d.). Project Follow Through. In What is DI?. Retrieved July 22, 2025, from https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/project-follow-through.html ↩︎
4. Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. Jossey-Bass. ↩︎