It’s Behavior Change Stupid! Transfer that!
Those of us in the learning professions are naturally enamored with the power of learning. This is all fine and good–learning is necessary for human survival and for our most enlightened achievements–but too narrow a focus on learning misses a key responsibility. Indeed, learning without sustained behavior change is like feeding a man who's planning to jump off a bridge. Nice, but largely besides the point.
The bottom line is that we learning professionals must not only look to the science of learning, but also the science of behavior change.
My friend and colleague Julie Dirksen has been thinking about behavior change for years. Here's a recent article she wrote:
- https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Science-of-Learning-Blog/2016/09/5-Barriers-to-Behavior-Change
Here is another recent resource on behavior change:
It's good to keep this all in perspective. Science often moves slowly and in fits and starts. There is great promise in the many and varied research areas under study. You can see this most fully in the health-behavior-change field. There's a ton of research being done. Here's a quick list of research being done on behavior change:
- Cardiac health
- Obesity
- Clean cooking
- Asthma
- HIV and STD prevention
- College-student drinking
- Cancer prevention
- Child survival
- Recycling
- Use of hotel towels
- Young-driver distraction
- Hand washing
- Encourage walking and cycling
- Smoking cessation
- Healthy pregnancy behaviors
- Promoting physical activity
Okay, the list is almost endless.
One of the findings is not surprising. Lasting behavior change is very difficult. Think how hard it is to lose weight and keep it off, or stop an internet addition. So it's great that researchers are looking into this.
In the learning field, we have our own version of behavior-change research. It's called transfer. We've already learned a lot about how to get people to transfer what they've learned back to their jobs or into their lives. We're not done learning, of course.
One thing we do know is that training by itself is rarely sufficient to produce lasting change. Sometimes our learners will take what they've learned, put it immediately into practice, deepen their own learning and continue to learn and engage and use what they've learned over time. Too often, they forget, they get distracted, they get no support.
Summary
My four messages to you are these:
- Keep your eyes open for Behavior Change Research.
- Keep your eyes open for Transfer-of-Learning Research.
- Don't be a fool in thinking that training/learning is enough.
- We learning professionals have a responsibility to enable usable behavior change.