[C]ollege students who learned a mathematical concept with concrete examples couldn’t apply that knowledge to new situations. But when students first learned the concept with abstract symbols, they were much more likely to transfer that knowledge
In a third experiment, the researchers presented 20 students with two concrete examples and then asked them to compare the two examples and write down any similarities they saw. After this experiment, about 44 percent of the students performed well on the test concerning the children’s game, while the remainder still did not perform better than chance.
If I’m reading this correctly, my response is, “Duh!” Maybe it’s just a bad press release, but it sounds like teaching by giving an example isn’t as good as teaching by giving the general concept, and then perhaps reinforcing it with an example. So we look at the paper