ABSTRACT
Traditional school tasks are highly constructed, well-structured, welldefined, short, oriented toward the individual, and designed to best fit the content to be taught instead of reality. An archetypical problem of this type is: ‘Two trains traveling toward each other at a speed o f ... leave their stations at ... o’clock. How long will it take...?’ Such tasks, though often seen as highly suitable for acquiring simple skills, are neither representative of the type of problems that students’ perceive as relevant nor have they proven to be especially effective for acquiring complex skills and competencies or for achieving transfer of learning.
