An Investigation of Students’ Perceptions of Learning Transfer across Six English-in-the-Disciplines (ED) Courses for Students of Arts and Humanities

Abstract

Learning transfer arises when students use prior experiences and apply the acquired knowledge to address new challenges in other learning contexts (Hirvela, 2016; James, 2014; Navarre Cleary, 2013). However, university teachers may find it difficult to promote learning transfer even where the academic literacy course is aligned to the disciplinary majors of their students such as in an English-in-the-Disciplines (ED) course. This study aims to investigate Year-2 and Year-3 Humanities and Arts undergraduate students’ perceptions of the learnt skills they find transferable in six ED courses at an English-medium international university. Students were invited to complete an in-class e-survey to solicit their evaluation of their understanding of the skills taught in each of the six ED courses and to identify which learning skills they have confidently transferred to other learning contexts. This presentation will detail findings obtained from quantitative analysis based on the structural model and guidelines proposed by Law and Fong (2020), as well as from thematic analysis on focus group data. Suggestions on pedagogical approaches that facilitate learning transfer from an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course to other university contexts will also be discussed.