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Gimp Documentation
Here is the typical documentation with the bare bones information:

Video
Like most of the latest tools we have example the videos are either outdated for the new version or just don't exist. Below is our "basics" video and if you slide over to minute marker 3:55 you will get a quick tutorial about the scale tool.

Corrective (Backward) Forward (Traditional): The Forward mode will scale the object as one might expect: with an enlarged preview, the object will be rendered enlarged.

Backward (Corrective): Performs transformation in the reverse direction: a reduced object will be rendered enlarged and conversely.

There is very little mentioned online about the corrective (backward) function. After playing with this and reading the scant information I realized this is a great feature! I could have used this many times before. For instance, lets say I have an image with a certain canvas size on one of my websites and after posting it with text wrapped around it etc. I decided that I don't like the way the image is cropped. Well the image can easily be cropped but I want the canvas size to stay the same so all of my text around the image stays with the same alignment etc.

The corrective (backward) feature solves this in one easy move. It basically crops the image and puts the result right back into the same canvas size. Below is the settings I used:



Below is the base image which is a good image but I want the exact same image frame (canvas) size and I want it to be filled with the sail boats and eliminate the surrounding water.



Using the scale tool with the settings shown above I drag it across the image creating a box that hugs the sail boats as shown below. See the circle in the middle of the grid? Put your scale tool cursor there to drag the box around. If you are happy with the grid alignment then hit the "Scale" button.



Below is the results, same size canvas filled with the sail boats. Because the grid selection we made was smaller than the canvas but the selected area became larger while filling the original canvas it is called (backward) correction.

I am glad I took the extra time and researched the corrective (backward) feature, I have learned a lot.

Here is my video version of what was shown above on the corrective (backward) feature: