An Exploration of Long-Term Far-Transfer Effects Following an Extended Intervention Program in the High School Science Curriculum

Same CASE cohorts as Adey & Shayer 1990 and Shayer & Adey 1993 (JRST IV)

England; students who received CASE in Years 7-8 (ages 11-13), outcomes at GCSE (age 16).

The canonical citation when someone tells a founder that school science can teach general thinking — this is the paper the phrase "long-term far transfer" comes from, and it is the version most often quoted outside science education. It reports the same intervention and the same GCSE outcome data as Shayer & Adey (1993, JRST 30(4):351-366), framed for a cognitive-science audience. Recorded separately and set aside as a duplicate so the archive holds the citation without double-counting the evidence.

Reports the CASE cohorts' GCSE results in science, mathematics and English 2-3 years after a two-year intervention set inside science lessons, as evidence of long-term far transfer. The numbers are those recorded under sci-rea-shayer-adey-1993-gcse-far-transfer (science 0.67σ, maths 0.72σ, English 0.69σ for the 11+ cohort, girls only). Adey later escalated the interpretation in his own words: "stimulating higher order thinking in science improves students' general intellectual ability across the board" — a claim about g, which this archive treats as requiring extraordinary evidence, and which a non-randomised study of ~24 classes cannot supply.

High — same non-randomised matched-class design, volunteer schools, non-implementing schools removed, and a three-year gap to outcome.

Failed at scale: EEF/Hanley et al. (2016) randomised 53 schools and found g = -0.01 on science, -0.15 on standardised English and -0.11 on standardised maths.