INDEPENDENT LIvING SKILLS TrAINING: TrANSFEr OF LEArNING rESEArCH IMPLICATIONS

The authors emphasize the importance of designing, implementing, and evaluating transfer-of-learning interventions. Implications from more than a century of transfer-of-learning research are applied to independent living skills training. Suggestions are provided for designing transfer-effective independent living skills training based on research-driven transfer-of-learning principles and conceptual models focusing on instructional design, ecological intervention, and stages of learner development,.

Although the concept of transfer of learning has been around since the beginning of the previous century, (Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901;Thorndike, 1903), training initiatives often fail to utilize the existing knowledge base and plan effectively for lasting performance within the life and work space of the learner. This article will provide examples of how to incorporate more than a century of transferof-learning research into practical suggestions for independent living training initiatives.
Early research pertaining to transfer emphasized instructional strategies involving such things as identical elements, general principles, stimulus variability, and response availability (Baldwin & Ford, 1988). However, recent approaches can be described as being more ecologically focused, recognizing the important role of the learner's application environment. These approaches also emphasize the importance of key persons before, during, and after the formal training session (Broad & Newstrom, 1992;Curry et. al., 1994). For example, one approach, developed and utilized at the Northeast Ohio Regional Training Center (NEORTC), builds on Lewin's force field theory and advocates for assessment and intervention within a worker's transfer field. It is described as the transfer of training and adult learning (TOTAL) approach (Curry et. al., 1994;Curry & Caplan, 1996, Curry, 1997. In addition to the recent emphasis on environmental factors, developmental approaches have emerged, influenced by research from the fields of cognitive and educational psychology exploring areas such as metacognition and differences between novices and experts (Anderson, 1985;Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981). Given its emphasis on child and youth development, it should not be surprising that the child and youth care field has also emphasized a developmental approach to worker development. Garfat (2001) provides a comprehensive review of various developmental models in the child and youth work literature. This article will discuss traditional, developmental, and ecological implications for transfer of learning of independent living skills (ILS) training. The focus will be on the youth worker and learner. However, many of these same principles can be applied to the transfer of ILS training for youth.

Implications from Transfer of Learning research
Ultimately, effective utilization of skills on the job or within the life space of the youth is desired. Transfer of learning has been described as the application of learning (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) acquired in a training setting to the job (Curry, Caplan, & Knuppel, 1994). Baldwin and Ford (1988) developed a useful overall framework for examining transfer of learning that can help to promote competence in independent living. They emphasized the importance of individual trainee characteristics, the work environment, and the training design. For example, one of the most important individual factors is what a trainee already knows. Similarly, environmental factors such as organizational support, the organizational value of training, administrative support, supervisory support, coworker support, and opportunity to use training have been found to promote transfer of learning (Brittain, 2000;Curry, 1996;Holton et al., 1997;Tracey et al., 1995). Interventions to promote effective practice on the job incorporate individual and organizational and environmental elements into the training design. Interventions with youth must also focus upon both the individual and life space elements.

Traditional Transfer of Learning research Principles
A large body of research has been conducted on four areas of instructional design (identical elements, general principles, stimulus variability, and response availability) that are relevant to training in independent living (Baldwin & Ford, 1988;Curry, 1996;Goldstein et al., 1979).

Identical Elements
The principle of identical elements basically says that transfer will be enhanced if the training and transfer settings are as similar as possible. The degree of similarity between the training and transfer situations determines the extent of transfer. Based upon this principle, here are suggestions for ILS training: 1. Use independent living training case scenarios that are as similar as possible to actual situations that workers will encounter. Create a feedback loop from the practice setting to the learning setting and back to the practice setting. For example, Dodd, Morse, and Mallon (in press) describe how they used learning circles to discuss the ways newly learned knowledge, skills, and attitudes were used in practice. This was an attempt to integrate the learning and doing settings to promote effective transfer.
2. Use instructional strategies that closely approximate how the workers will train ILS on the job. For example, workers may rehearse in training an individual or group ILS session that they plan to implement with youth.
3. Help learners cognitively store ILS training information with retrieval in mind. Identify where and when potential teaching situations are likely to occur. Making these cognitive connections in training increases the likelihood that the workers will recognize when an opportunity exists to use newly learned skills. Similarly, help learners identify cues that will signal the workers that an opportunity for teaching an independent living skill to youth exists. As an example, a television program or movie might prompt a discussion that could highlight content for later instruction or reinforcement in a structured skills training session.

4.
Use examples, forms, terminology, and so forth in training that are similar to what are used in the work environment. Consider conducting the training, or a portion of the training, in the work environment where the workers interact with youth. Provide application aides in training that can be used in the work environment. Hall & Coakley (in press) describe the use and distribution of a strength-based resource guide, listing adolescent services and support organizations that could be used on the job.

5.
Help learners recognize those things that are common between the learning and transfer situation for learning to transfer.

General Principles
Transfer occurs when general rules and principles which underlie the subject matter are taught. The teaching of critical thinking, general problem-solving and decision-making skills is based upon this principle. This principle implies that independent living training should do the following: 1. Train underlying principles of the teaching of independent living skills for youth that transcend context. Help learners recognize these underlying principles. Salomon and Perkins (1989) refer to this approach as promoting "mindful abstraction. " Scannapieco, Connell-Carrick, and Steinberg (in press) provide an example of the teaching of general principles. Four underlying general principles were interwoven into their Texas training project for supervisors: (1) positive youth development, (2) collaboration, (3) cultural responsiveness, and (4) permanent connections. The transfer matrix ( Figure 1 described in a later section) is an example of a transfer-of-learning model that can be used with any type of training, including independent living skills.
2. Utilize parallel processing. For example, have the learners examine how the relationship of trainer-trainee, supervisor-supervisee, worker-youth, and parent-youth balance the need for rules and structure, connection and relationship, and autonomy and independence. Ask the workers to examine how their own development toward becoming an independent but connected practitioner with other professionals resembles a youth's development of independence and interdependence with others. Help workers to recognize factors that can help or hinder effective transfer of learning for them and the youth (e.g., a coworker or peer that reinforces or negates the importance of ILS training).
3. Teach metacognitive skills. Help the training participants learn how to learn and apply the application principles regarding ILS training. Help them learn to use general principles of positive youth development, collaboration, cultural responsiveness, and permanent connections to monitor and guide their practice. For example, provide suggestions and application aides that can serve as reminders to workers on the job that a case situation may apply to one of the principles in training. Scannapieco, Connell-Carrick, and Steinberg (in press) describe the use of a teaching kit for supervisors to promote these underlying principles.

Stimulus Variability
This principle suggests that transfer of ILS learning is promoted by using a variety of relevant stimuli, such as the following: 1. Use a variety of case examples for each ILS training principle to strengthen a learner's understanding of the principles.

2.
Provide examples of when a principle applies and when not.
3. Teach ILS training with a variety of situations and with a variety of individuals. Involve persons from the work environment (e.g., supervisors, coworkers, youth) in the training. Hall and Coakley (in press) provide examples of youth involvement in training.

Response Availability and Conditions of Practice
Response availability and conditions of practice are strategies that promote availability of eliciting the appropriate response at the appropriate time, with the following suggestions: 1. Identify specific ILS training skills that can be practiced in the training and work environments. Practice the demonstration of real case scenarios (or as close to real as possible). Learners need the opportunity to demonstrate ILS training and not just discuss how to conduct the training. Create training scenarios that include both formal and informal opportunities within the life space to promote independent living skills.
2. Practice central independent skills to the level of automaticity. Some skills can be overlearned to the extent that a worker routinely employs them. For example, a worker may routinely discuss the importance of independent living skills during the first interview with a youth.

Help participants learn ILS information with its application in mind.
Make cognitive connections between the learning and doing situations (this is similar to the identical elements principle). For example, ask a learner to adapt a role play to make it as similar as possible to a typical work situation. You may ask them to choose another role player that most reminds them of a coworker or youth in their work situation.
4. Use distributed practice with gradual removal of practice. Integrate the practice into the work environment. This may involve the use of trainers and coaches in team meetings, and so forth. Encourage supervisors and others within the work environment to promote ILS training through discussion in individual supervisory sessions and team meetings. Many of the articles within this issue focus on the supervisor in promoting transfer of learning (Antle, Barbee, & Sullivan, (in press); Estafan, Evans, & Lum, (in press); Hall & Coakley, (in press); Landsman & D'Aunno,( in press); Scannapieco, Connell-Carrick, & Steinberg, (in press)).
5. Help participants plan for application of learning. In addition to increasing the transfer potential for those developing a plan, the sharing of application plans with others can help colearners recognize additional potential applications (Mueller, 1985;Tracey & Pecora, 1988). Dodd, Morse, and Mallon (in press) discuss the use of action plans to both promote and assess transfer of learning.

A Developmental Learning Approach: Levels of Competence
The state of the field in independent living training has made significant progress in the identification of areas of competence for those working with youth, for example, ability to assess youth's readiness for independent living and developing, coordinating, and implementing independent living plans for teens (Institute for Human Services & Ohio Child Welfare Training Program, 2008). However, there is also a need to think developmentally and identify the desired level of competence. The levels of competence model can be a useful framework for conceptualizing much of what we know about the progression of learning process from novice to expert in the field (Curry, 2001;Curry & Rybicki, 1995;Pike, 1989). This process involves competence and meta-competence (the ability to reflect upon, monitor, and guide one's practice). Progression through the levels involves varying rates of time, as well as individual and program activity. Listed below are the five levels followed by a discussion of their corresponding characteristics. The Pennsylvania Child Welfare Training Program has adapted the model for areas such as human diversity training and describes levels as the listed in parentheses (Pennsylvania Child Welfare Competency-Based Training and Certification Program, 2001).

Unconscious competence (reinforcement and extension of skills).
5. Conscious unconscious competence (high integration with ability to teach others).

Unconscious Incompetence (Awareness)
This stage is characterized by workers who do not know what they do not know pertaining to ILS training. Workers do not perform adequately in a competency area. However, workers are not aware of their incompetence. These workers may not even be aware of the importance of ILS training. A goal in this stage is to promote learning readiness by increasing awareness of the need for learning in this area. Providing information on the ILS training competencies can be one way to help workers become aware of the skills necessary to teach ILS in a classroom setting or within the youth's life space. Engaging workers to shadow highly competent workers in this area as they promote the development of ILS in youth is another strategy. Workers may obtain a better appreciation for how they can teach or support a youth's learning and application of ILS.

Conscious Incompetence (Recognition)
Workers in this stage are not yet competent in ILS competency areas. However, these workers are aware of their knowledge, attitude, or skill limitations. They may be motivated to increase competence in order to improve performance or attain other goals. Workers in this stage are most appropriate candidates for training, or some other educational/developmental and remedial intervention. Clarification of learning goals, roles, rules, and interpersonal expectations is an important task of this stage. Developing a learning contract between supervisor, worker, trainer, or other experts would be appropriate. Helping workers to identify how to apply learning can occur even prior to training. There are a variety of sources of information that can be included in a learning and application plan. The potential for learning is perhaps greatest with participants at this level.

Conscious Competence (Introduction of New Skills)
Workers at this level may be considered as having emerging competence. Workers in this stage have the knowledge and skill to perform a task, but the performance doesn't happen automatically. Workers may have to be reminded or cued by the supervisor or competent colleague to utilize the knowledge or skill already stored in long-term memory. Also, whenever workers perform the skill, it may not be fluid. Workers may have to think about it while performing.
Since short-term memory can contain only a limited amount of information, workers may have to rely on notes or cues from others (Miller, 1956). Successfully training in ILS necessitates that workers keep their learning goal, strategy, and information regarding the learning participants in active working memory. In addition, attending to what a participant is saying and doing as well as monitoring one's own trainer behavior as part of an interactional exchange may overtax one's cognitive processing abilities. For example, during an ILS training session, workers may lose sight of the training goal and may be unsure of their training techniques, sometimes not using the most appropriate response.
Anxiety can also limit the amount of information that can be maintained within short-term, active memory as well as the retrieval of information from long-term memory into active memory. Over reliance on notes or long pauses when teaching ILS and trying to remember what to do next may adversely affect workers' credibility with youth. The result is a less efficient and often less effective interactional process when compared to the performance of a more experienced ILS instructor or practitioner.
In this stage, workers' understanding and performance in an ILS competency area begins the transition from a collection of relatively isolated information and facts to recognition of "if-then" procedures. Workers begin to recognize that certain situations require specific actions or reactions. Workers may apply learning without competently considering the context (e.g., not adapting a curriculum to the current needs expressed by the youth). As they transition to the next stage, however, the ILS trainers or workers begin to become context conscious (Hills, 1989). In addition, they begin to recognize the underlying patterns or structure of behavior rather than responding to surface features. For example, a youth that is talking with another youth while ILS information is being presented may be actively processing and sharing learning rather than being disrespectful as the surface behavior may indicate.
With practice, performance steps consolidate and begin to require less active short-term memory, characteristic of the next stage. In the next stage, workers become more context conscious and can more easily adapt instructional strategies to the ILS learning needs of the youth. More conscious memory is available to recognize context and better understand the current needs of youth in the moment. Strategies for promoting learning in this stage focus on providing opportunities for practice, correctional feedback, and practice during and after the training. Therefore, previous suggestions pertaining to response availability and conditions of practice are appropriate at this stage. Additional suggestions include the following: 1. Identify concrete ILS training situations so that skills can be practiced in the training and work environments.
2. Identify and practice key skills to the level of automaticity. Some skills should be overlearned to the extent that a worker routinely employs them with little conscious effort.
3. Provide prompts, cues, and learning and application aids until a skill is fluidly performed. These aids can be used both in the classroom setting and the application setting. Since the subject matter can still raise anxiety, the trainer should facilitate success by providing the additional needed supports.
4. Provide coaching, performance feedback, and emotional support until fluidly performed. Prepare workers for the possibility of the result's dip and provide support for continued use.
5. Increase the types of ILS practice scenarios to include increasingly ever-widening situations. This may involve the use of a variety of individuals and settings that workers encounter. Since the amount of time permitted in training is limited, a practice and participant feedback plan must be developed and implemented that extends beyond the training setting. For example, a supervisor could identify an increasingly complex case to assign the worker with supportive coaching from a more experienced ILS training colleague.
6. Use distributed practice with gradual removal of practice. Integrate the practice into the work environment. This may involve the use of trainers and coaches in team meetings, and so forth. Encourage supervisors and others within the work environment to promote practice through discussion, practice, and problem solving in team meetings.
7. Provide booster shot review and application sessions to help participants discuss opportunities and barriers to implementation.

Unconscious Competence (Reinforcement and Extension of Skills)
This phase is characterized by workers who have sufficient mastery of a competency area. In this stage, a competency is learned to a level where it can be performed relatively automatically. Steps to successful performance in a competency area are consolidated and now appear as a fluid, effortless activity. Workers use little active, short-term memory while conducting the skill. They no longer have to think about the skill while performing it. It has been learned to the level of automaticity. Therefore, more short-term memory is available and workers can consciously focus on other activities such as self-monitoring. Workers can become more context conscious.
Ironically, one of the characteristics of this stage is that a competency is learned so well that workers are no longer mindful of the process of how the activity is conducted (they do not have to be). Workers may intuitively recognize underlying patterns and structures of behavior and respond accordingly. However, they may not be able to articulate the why and how of their performance.
Workers at this stage should be encouraged to continue their competent ILS training performance but also prompted to continue to self-monitor their training as well as be reminded that learning and development is on ongoing process. Revisiting ILS training is still appropriate to help them learn in greater depth and better conceptualize their practice. These workers can also be used as role models and coaches for less experienced workers (those in levels 1 & 2) to shadow. Trying out these new roles may prompt them to continue to reflect upon, conceptualize, and articulate competent ILS training practice, helping them to move toward the next level.

Conscious Unconscious Competence (High Integration with Ability to Teach Others)
This fifth stage is characterized by workers who can not only perform at a proficient level, but are able to conceptualize and articulate the process involved in competent performance. These workers may be considered as reflective practitioners who can also communicate effective practice ILS training principles, strategies, and techniques to others.
With self-reflection and help from others (e.g., supervisor, trainer, coach, or colleague), workers recognize the underlying structure to certain situations rather than just the surface features. Workers in the previous stage have an intuitive grasp but cannot competently conceptualize and articulate these abstract concepts to others. In this stage, they are able to perform proficiently as well as conceptually understand and monitor the performance process. For example, workers' understanding of parallel process can be useful in communicating this understanding to other ILS training colleagues.
Workers in this stage have a high level of proficiency in the competency area as well as competent metacognitive skills. They are able to proficiently monitor their performance (learning and application). Metacognitive skills (meta-competence) facilitates the movement from level one (unconscious incompetence) to level five (conscious unconscious competence). At this level, workers are able to reflect in (while teaching or interacting with youth) as well as reflect on (later self-reflection or in supervision or consultation) their ILS training performance with supervisors or colleagues. They recognize the limitations of their knowledge and skill and the need for continual learning. They are simultaneously functioning in levels 2 and 5.
These workers make good candidates for sharing knowledge about ILS training. They should be encouraged to teach, train, and publish professionally.

Ecological Model for Promoting Application of Learning on the Job
Curry, Caplan, and Knuppel (1994) describe a basic but comprehensive model that can be used to guide individual, environmental, and training design transfer interventions (including low and high road approaches) into a comprehensive transfer plan. Broad and Newstrom (1992) and Wentz (2002) also advocate a similar approach. They emphasize that key persons (e.g., worker, coworker, supervisor, trainer) at key times (before, during, and after formal training) can help or hinder transfer effectiveness. See figure 1. They suggest the utilization of a transfer matrix for transfer assessment and intervention that can be applied to any training. Figure 1 provides a brief illustration of how the model could be applied to ILS training. Many additional before, during, and after transfer strategies that incorporate both low and high road approaches can be included to help a child and youth care training and development professional achieve training and transfer objectives. According to the model, the total number and strength of factors in each cell promoting (driving forces) and hindering transfer (restraining forces) determines the amount of transfer of learning. The model can be used as a template to place over any existing training program to assess factors that affect transfer and develop an effective plan for transfer intervention and evaluation by increasing driving forces and decreasing restraining forces. Wentz (2002) also recommends using the model when things seem to go wrong in training, moving from blaming to learning. This approach involves a paradigm shift from viewing training as an event that occurs during the training session to an intervention influenced by context including key individuals before, during, and after training.

Person
Before During After

Learner
Identify relevant cases that pertain to ILS training.
Think about how you will recognize opportunities to teach ILS when you are on the job.
Meet with your supervisor to help you identify how you can use your new learning to promote ILS.

Trainer
Meet with various personnel to identify relevant case scenarios for later use in ILS training.
Help learners make cognitive connections from in-class discussion to real work situations by helping them identify youth and situations to apply newly learned ILS skills.
Send an e-mail reminding learners to meet with their supervisors to facilitate application. Meet with learners for a follow-up "booster shot" session to discuss application of learning and refresh skills.

Supervisor
Meet with worker to emphasize the importance of ILS training.
Attend the ILS training with the entire team.
Lead a discussion during a team meeting regarding ways that the ILS training can be incorporated into daily practice.

Evaluating Transfer of Independent Living Skills Training
Although there is an increased recognition of the importance of training for transfer by most training and development professionals, many fail to effectively evaluate learning transfer to the job (Curry & Leake, 2004). The very act of evaluating brings increased attention by key players in the transfer process to the importance of transfer of learning, increasing the likelihood of greater transfer of learning. Thus, training evaluation becomes a transfer of learning intervention (Curry, 1997).
Several articles in this issue provide examples of strategies for evaluating independent living training. Lyon, DeSanti, and Bell (in press) emphasize that many training outcomes depend on the transfer of learning that occurs between supervisors and caseworkers they supervise. Lyon et al. (in press) indicate that four of the projects described in this issue rely on a model in which supervisors are trained on core principles and provide materials and activities to promote transfer. Addition-ally, these authors provide a summary of project evaluation efforts including the assessment of transfer via follow-up telephone surveys, review of action plans, review of case files, qualitative interviews regarding barriers and facilitators. They describe how several of the projects evaluated transfer of learning. Other strategies described include using behavioral rating scales (Antle et al., in press), conducting learning circles to identify progress toward action plan objectives (Dodd et al., in press), and assessing changes at the department level via electronic surveys (Estafan et al., in press). As illustrated through the projects' evaluation efforts, it is important to assess the outcome includes the extent of transfer and what content is transferred, as well as the process, including factors that help or hinder transfer of learning.

Some Final Discussion
Based on the many lessons learned in the articles presented in this special issue and our role as youth work scholars and practitioners, we think that young adults who are navigating independent living will need these things for the future: • Good situational judgment, especially critical decision-making skills; • Capacity for entrepreneurial behavior, the ability to reconfigure limited resources into livable conditions with employment and healthy sustained relationships, and effective use of services from social programs; • Maturing social skills that promote healthy interdependence, productive peer and work relationships, basic self-care and healthy intimate life, and a secure life at work and home.
Interwoven in these competencies are all of the dynamics of risk and resilience brought to bear in the independent living experience. It's important not only that the youth workers be trained in the content of these competencies and skills, but in full training transfer the youth workers are able to serve as role models for the youth in the ways they guide, lead, and generate the program. For example, independent living youth need increasing opportunities to make decisions and live with the realistic consequences within appropriately supported situations. Mirroring this same dynamic, youth workers should have the leadership training to make effective decisions. This potentially includes greater responsibility and situational control over the resources for running their own unit within a larger organization as well as maximum delegation of authority from the agency. In this way the workers can meet independent living youth where they are in their development. The purpose of role modeling and teaching independent living can be fulfilled only if the youth workers themselves are independent and do not have to check every decision with higher ups. Such a critical decision-making approach for training, youth engagement, and program management is especially important in independent living programs which have elements of youth self-governance as central to the developmental experience of the milieu.
As we look to the future of independent living programs, a powerful metric for the evaluation of training transfer might begin with the question, To what extent are youth and youth workers reciprocally capable of taking responsibility for critical decision making? It is also essential for success at the program level to provide youth workers with enriched training that emphasizes choice, team process, and other exercises that demonstrate how to navigate practice strategies with multiple correct answers. This is the same thing we expect from the youth in their growing independence.
Equally important to situational judgment and critical decision making in the transfer of knowledge is the capacity to be entrepreneurial. Like youth, staff should have the maximum opportunity to change the scope of the learning experience by reorganizing the training agenda to meet real-time needs and to incorporate found resources. For example, in addition to delivering structured training curriculum for the youth workers, the trainer might also prepare some units that are presented on the basis of an on-the-spot assessment of immediate needs. To emphasize critical choice and entrepreneurial spirit, youth workers can be encouraged to reach out through their own community-wide networks to incorporate local training resources into the process, which can in turn be traded or bartered with other organizations. Here the metric for the training transfer may be to evaluate the extent youth and youth workers are capable of taking reasonable and healthy risks. How do the youth workers and youth together reconfigure and incorporate successes and failures into lessons learned?
Most important are the social competencies and skills that independent living youth need to follow through. How many times can we hear and say, "What does it take to make sure that independent living youth follow through"! In the ecology, with the milieu as systems of support integral to community, youth depend powerfully on the youth workers to form the strong attachments necessary to make healthy relationships relatively late in finishing adolescence and moving to young adulthood. In independent living are we mentors, coaches, or sometime lifelong replacements for relatives? It is a major challenge to figure out how much intimacy young adults need especially if they experience failure by having multiple placements and being hurt by many of the adults in their lives. Training for youth workers should ideally include the competencies of communication and relationship building with an emphasis on understanding young adult learning and development. The way in which youth worker teams function with healthy interdependence and positive situational judgment role models on a daily basis the range of skills that independent living youth must internalize to succeed.
Perhaps more than in the other transitions across the continuum of care, the shift when older youth age out of care, requires mutuality and a reciprocal transfer of knowledge. Ideally in the case of independent living, youth workers serve as adult partners to older youth and they work together. Training transfer in the independent living of the future continues to carry with it the hope for generational change: The youth change us, and we change the youth. Training transfer, therefore, needs to powerfully reflect optimal adult learning, healthy engagement in productive decision-making, and an entrepreneurial spirit for maturing social skills in building a system of support. The learning that goes on in the training room, if we are to expect it to have full impact after the fact, should reflect a team that functions in the same ways we expect youth to behave and learn. To achieve and sustain independence, we collaborate in constructing healthy relationships with the youth that develop all of us for the future.