Centre stage papers – Days 3, 4 & 5: Extending the vision

Creating deep learning: what is deep learning and what conditions are required?

 

Before I attempt to describe deep learning, it may be worthwhile to ask the question ‘what is worth learning?’ Many young people learn to play in a music group; many learn to remember and tell jokes that everyone finds funny; many learn the best conditions and places to go looking for birds; many learn to become experts at Play Station, and many learn how to kick a football with both feet. I assume that these students have gone to significant lengths to learn how to do these activities well. Of course, many students also learn that one should always do one’s best to complete assignments at school in a timely and thoughtful manner. Some of these students truly excel at school. Other students may not excel at academics but shine in school because they are involved with school activities such as sport, debate and community service. Thus, there seems to be a wide variety of activities worth learning deeply about. As a teacher, I somehow need to be confident enough to judge what is worth learning and what is not. Thus, how do I judge the real situation of a student who represents his country in equestrian sports but who is not willing to dedicate significant time to his school studies? Indeed, am I in a position to judge? I believe I am in a position to judge. Why would I be a schoolteacher if I didn’t at least have some beliefs about what is worth learning?

Other people have views of what is worth learning and this may make the job of the teacher that bit more complicated. I pity those teachers who are told by outside accrediting agencies what to teach, those teachers who are handed a list of subject-specific objectives for students, those teachers who have to use a textbook, those teachers who have to live with the idea that other people have made a judgment about what students in their classes have to learn, those teachers who know that each student has different learning priorities and yet they have to teach all students the same objectives. Of course, the role of the teacher is not only to teach discipline-specific concepts and methods, but also to develop dispositions towards learning (one’s own and the students) so that learners are self-directed, collaborative and principled. Teachers know only too well that developing such dispositions does not occur in isolation and that it requires contextualisation. Since most of schooling is dedicated to discipline-specific classrooms, it seems to make sense to attempt to develop such dispositions there. And yet, isn’t the teacher in a somewhat difficult situation if the students do not buy into what he or she wants them to learn. How can you help a student to show care when you might be seen to not care about what they want to learn? Why expect students to reflect on something that is boring to them, even despite efforts by publishers and teachers to spice up topics such as fractions and the Periodic Table of Elements. A principled young person might be exemplifying this disposition by deciding to pay little attention to doing well at an assessment task and spend time instead practicing water jumps on a horse. Now, teachers have learned tricks. We can sometimes make boring topics fun by playing games and having fun activities. But fun teachers are not necessarily good teachers. And yet, I sense sometimes that good teachers are seen as those who make boring topics more exciting. In such conditions of mixed messages, it seems to me that the majority of students will have difficulties learning at a significant level. If the motivation to learn is lacking, we cannot really tell how the person is approaching learning. Why should someone approach a learning situation seriously if they do not see what’s in it for them? Thus, assessment of students sometimes tells us more about their interest in a topic than their learning dispositions.

But, I am lucky. No outside agency tells me what specific topics my students need to learn. My students, head of department, colleagues and I decide. I am a Science and Theory of Knowledge (ToK) teacher at an international school in Turkey, which runs all three International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes – the Primary Years Programme (PYP), the Middle Years Programme (MYP), and the Diploma Programme (DP). I teach science in the MYP, and ToK in the DP, although this paper examines my position in the MYP. In the MYP, the IB demands that I assess all students under six criteria (One World, Communication, Knowledge & Understanding, Science Inquiry, Processing Data, and Attitudes to Science). It is then my responsibility to ensure that the objectives and assessment tasks meet the demands of the MYP assessment criteria in science. Now, I know if a topic is boring for all students, then it may not be worth teaching, and that I should forget about it at least for that year.

So now I am in a position where at least I can gauge students’ interests, involve them and assess them on themes that they are actually interested in. And yet it is clearly not that simple. Empowering students is obviously one important key to more meaningful learning. What forms of empowerment does this entail in my classroom? I list a few examples below.

• Giving students choices in topic and mode of presentation of reports. Examples include an open-ended science investigation into what factors affect the size and shape of a crater, creating a board game based on the Periodic Table of Elements, choosing and giving own opinions from a selection of six discussion papers, which debate controversial ecological issues (of course, such assignments demands the teacher to provide clear criteria for excellence and this I provide through detailed rubrics).
• Having students specify where projects/reports/assessment tasks go after their presentation (for example, home, library, department, local village school, grandma).
• Rewriting/creating notes for the unit so that future students of the grade level can benefit from their findings and reports, as well as making concepts more easily understood.
• Encouraging a student-created bulletin board.
• ‘Link Days’ - days in which older students go in groups (three to five students in each) to teach science in the primary school. The older students choose themes, methodologies, materials, and create problem/reflection sheets.

In these activities, the hope is that students will try their best so that not only can I gauge levels of understanding but do so knowing that the students were keen to learn. Now, this makes it much easier to know students’ metacognitive dispositions, and to be in a position to coach them for deep learning.

What is deep learning? This, I believe, is concerned with learning dispositions and helping students to approach learning in such a way that they can convince others that they know what they are talking about! The IB describes effective learners as inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced and reflective. Thus, for the IB at least, these are the attributes necessary for deep learning and for this discussion these may be a useful platform for framing this paper’s title question. The question arises, then, how these can be taught. There may be three basic ways to do this and they overlap – through modelling, through explicit teaching, and through student practice. Thus, I can teach open-mindedness by considering other options as I teach, or illustrate how others or I practice being so. I can try and coach students to critically assess the arguments of an essay by providing explicit strategies and an appropriate rubric/checklist. For students to learn how to reflect, I provide opportunities where they share their reflections at the beginning, middle and end of an assignment (note that most students will reflect critically on something if it important to them, so the teaching of reflection is more to do with articulating and using the reflective thoughts so that so that they probe deeper into learning strategies). When such approaches to learning become habit, we can say that students are ready to learn at a deep level. They are ready to become experts in a field if they realise that learning something deeply does not mean learning what someone else says. Thus, a deep-learning chef does not recall recipes off-by-heart but realises that one can add or subtract the quantity and variety of ingredients. The chef is mindful that knowledge is not static.

Thus, to be in a position to learn deeply, students need to be encouraged to develop attributes or dispositions towards learning, such as those outlined above. In order to teach such dispositions, it makes sense to make every effort to involve young people in deciding what to learn. If students are interested, they will do their best to learn and so it is easier for teachers to make sound judgments on what, and how, they have learned. It seems somewhat pointless to make these judgments in situations where the students do not want to learn in the first place. Long-term, open-ended assignments (individual and in small groups) encourage students to inquire and be creative, while at the same time they can take advantage of teacher guidance to plan and monitor their own learning. While I acknowledge my weaknesses in certain dispositions, I still feel that I can help young people to learn deeply. As already mentioned, that is why I am a schoolteacher.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Éanna OBoyle is a teacher at Istanbul International Community School, in Turkey.

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