The research investigates 'use of knowledge' by students who are involved in a course where knowledge is taught in specific contexts taken from life outside and inside school, but beyond the laboratory. In order to investigate this, the research examines how successful students are in conventional exams where real world contexts are trivialised and laboratory/school contexts dominate, and compare this with an assessment where context varies but is not trivialised and is real world. In

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... , the research investigates how effectively students are able to transfer their learning of physics concepts across the differing real-life contexts found in the Supported Learning in Physics (SLIP) programme, and finally onto a non-contextual situation such an examination question.