Deeper Learning

School should prepare students to take their place in the world as productive citizens. It should help them discover their talents and give expression to their passions. It should be this and more. But much of what we see are places geared around producing people who can pass exams. There are other lofty goals that are attended to, such as the rounding of students in spiritual and social areas. Many teachers just think these get in the way of the main goal! Although we would say better teaching and learning are the goals the metric we use, principally, is external exam marks.

So can we build a system that asks students to go deeper than the shallow learning that results from covering inordinate amounts of content? How do we establish a culture of deeper learning in schools? I believe that we can do this AND still have students do well, really well, in external exams.

The paradigm we have now is not working for a majority of our students. They are not the same students our system was designed for 100 years ago and not the same as our teachers were trained to teach.

I love infographics. This one above tells a story SO much better than I could write in 1000 words. Why don't we teach infographic creation in English as a way of communicating ideas? Students have great tools at their fingertips and a global audience they could publish to. I think that might make them care more about their work!

This shift requires new and innovative ways of thinking about school, about the timetable, about the spaces we learn in, about how we teach, about where students learn and with whom. It requires igniting students passions and allowing them choice in their learning journey. It means giving away some control and giving students more independence and more responsibility. It means allowing them to collaborate, asking them to think critically, solve real problems, be a mentor and understand HOW to learn and how they learn best. It means personalising learning.

Deeper learning is simply what highly effective educators have always provided: the delivery of rich core content to students in innovative ways that allow them to learn and then apply what they have learned.

Check out the Maths problem at 4:50

Our students could easily make one of these - another GREAT way to communicate ideas and demonstrate learning...

More questions and thoughts! Answers to follow...