Pedagogy Hunt 3: Deeper learning.

A Rich Seam : How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning; Fullan, Michael & Langworthy, Maria, (2014)

A really long but interesting report here (full report embedded below) that despite feeling a little too biased and a little too much like it was desperatley trying to sell these new pedagogies at all costs, does actually help me think that part of my project can use this type of 'deep learning' pedagogy as there is significant overlap with what i am trying to do with elements of curation pedagogy and independent background culture work.

Highlights: 


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"Increasingly, digital access is freeing teaching and learning from the constraints of prescribed curricular content. These forces drive changes in the roles and relationships of students and teachers, among teachers, and within organisational systems... Helping students learn about themselves as learners and continuously assess and reflect upon their own progress is essential to this process. The new pedagogies, as we will describe them, require students not only to create new knowledge, but also to connect it to the world, using the power of digital tools to do things that matter beyond school. It is through this final step of ‘doing’ things with knowledge that students gain the experience, self-confidence, perseverance and proactive disposition they need to create value in our knowledge-based, technology-driven societies. "

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"Everything else has accelerated but schools have not; so schools have become more disconnected. The walls between schools and the outside need to be more permeable"

Interview with Larry Rosenstock, CEO of High Tech High Network, San Diego, California

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By contrast, in the new pedagogies model, the foundation of teacher quality is a teacher’s pedagogical capacity – their repertoire of teaching strategies and their ability to form partnerships with students in mastering the process of learning. Technology in the new model is pervasive and it is used to discover and master content knowledge and to enable the deep learning goals of creating and using new knowledge in the world. 

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First, this model is new because it aims to achieve deep learning goals that involve the creation and use of new knowledge in the real world. Second, this model becomes manifest in the new learning partnerships that emerge between and among students and teachers when the learning process becomes the focal point for the mutual discovery, creation and use of knowledge. Third, this model responds to and is enabled by digital access inside and outside of schools. 

This is useful for this project as it highlights the needs for my students to actually 'do' something with their cultural background knowledge. My project will not be successful if I just ask students to learn new knowledge to replace gaps in theirs cultural background, they need to create something new that is potentially useful or related to their everyday lives.



A good outline is here:

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New Pedagogies 

The new pedagogies are not as simple as ‘flipped’ classrooms or MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) where content information and existing knowledge are ‘delivered’ online rather than through textbooks or live in classrooms. As Will Richardson17 bluntly puts it, “simply adding a layer of expensive tools on top of the traditional curriculum does nothing to address the learning needs of modern learners.” The new pedagogies are much more than the ‘flipped model’ and other ad hoc innovations. They are substantially more complex: 

• The explicit aim is deep learning that goes beyond the mastery of existing content knowledge. Here, deep learning is defined as ‘creating and using new knowledge in the world.’ Technology has unleashed learning, and the potential for students to apply knowledge in the world outside of school; new pedagogies leverage all of this in the formal learning process. 

• Teaching shifts from focusing on covering all required content to focusing on the learning process, developing students’ ability to lead their own learning and to do things with their learning. Teachers are partners with students in deep learning tasks characterised by exploration, connectedness and broader, real-world purposes. 

• Learning outcomes are measured in terms of students’ 1) capacities to build new knowledge and to lead their own learning effectively, 2) proactive dispositions and their abilities to persevere through challenges, and 3) the development of citizens who are life-long learners. 

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Many of the teachers we interviewed had students who were no longer willing to accept the role of being passive receivers of learning defined by someone else. Young people are now digitally connected to overwhelming amounts of information and ideas. Amid this, students greet teachers’ attempts to deliver content knowledge using traditional didactic approaches with scepticism. In particular, once they have mastered basic skills, students know there is so much more ‘out there’ and are unimpressed by pre-packaged, depersonalised learning experiences. But at the same time, teachers cannot simply let go of the reins 

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Learning Re-structured 

Deep learning tasks re-structure learning activities from a singular focus on content mastery to the explicit development of students’ capacities to learn, create and proactively implement their learning. In their most effective instances, deep learning tasks are: 

1. guided by clear and appropriately challenging learning goals, goals that ideally incorporate both curricular content and students’ interests or aspirations. 

2. include specific and precise success criteria that help both teacher and student know how well goals are being achieved. 

3. incorporate feedback and formative evaluation cycles into the learning and doing processes, building students’ self-confidence and ‘proactive dispositions 

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Create and Use New Knowledge 

Both in theory and in the practical examples we have seen, deep learning tasks involve knowledge construction.40 Knowledge construction, in our terminology, means students creating knowledge that is new to them rather than reproducing or applying existing knowledge. 

This process, she said, was how every teacher worked, using the content materials and assessments provided in standard textbooks. Both her role and her students’ roles were to reproduce that existing content knowledge. In deep learning tasks, the goal is to develop new knowledge, through the integration of prior knowledge with ideas, information and concepts, into a wholly new product, concept, solution or content. In good deep learning tasks, students also go beyond creating new knowledge to doing something with it – to using that new knowledge in the world. In this sense, deep learning tasks have a constructivist orientation, with an emphasis on the application of new knowledge in real contexts. 

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Technology, strategically integrated with the other core components of the new pedagogies, unleashes deep learning. When pedagogical and deep learning capacities are clearly defined and developed, digital tools and resources enable the: 1) discovery and mastery of new content knowledge; 2) collaborative, connected learning; 3) low-cost creation and iteration of new knowledge; 4) use of new knowledge with authentic audiences for “real” purposes; and 5) enhancement of teachers’ ability to put students in control of the learning process, accelerating learner autonomy.58 

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Collaborative, Connected Learning 

Pervasive access to digital tools and resources makes deep learning more possible through broadening the time and space in which students can connect with teachers, peers and others for idea generation, feedback, expertise and the assessment of progress. This inherently makes the learning process more social, which connects the learning process with modern research and theories on how people learn.61 

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In its effective versions, new pedagogies should help students develop over time as independent, autonomous learners able to effectively design, pursue and achieve their own learning goals and personal aspirations as well as master curricular learning goals. But this doesn’t happen by itself. The ultimate goal for teachers, as John Hattie has described, is to “help students to become their own teachers.”69  (hattie 2012)

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Let us be clear that we are not arguing for the teaching and learning of ‘generic’ deep learning skills i.e. teaching ‘collaboration’ or ‘knowledge construction’ outside a content domain. We are saying that when the learning process is designed in a way that requires content mastery in order for students to create and use new knowledge, both students’ content knowledge and their deep learning skills are developed. You don’t develop collaboration skills by talking about collaboration in the abstract; you develop them by collaborating on issues and problems of substance that require content knowledge. Hattie’s research shows that developing deep learning skills without grounding them in real content will not work. 

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New learning partnerships between teachers and students are the essential foundations for effective new pedagogies. These partnerships are beginning to emerge naturally as digital access opens the door to broader and more varied sources of content knowledge. As bored students and alienated teachers seek greener pastures, the new learning is a natural attraction. Students begin to take part in defining learning goals, connecting the learning to their own interests and aspirations and becoming more active observers and guides to their own and to their peers’ learning and progress. Deep learning tasks build upon the foundation of the new learning partnerships. They challenge students to construct knowledge and begin to use their ideas in the real world. In the process, they develop key skills and the experience of doing ‘knowledge work’ 

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Teachers 

• Begin to practice a partnering approach to learn from and with your students. 

• Make sure you know your students’ aspirations and interests. 

• Identify the deep learning tasks that are taking place in your school or broader community. 

• Begin to redefine your learning tasks for and with your students, building in more opportunities for knowledge construction, problem-solving and implementation in the real world, and connecting the tasks to students’ aspirations. 

• Collaborate with other teachers and stakeholders on what is working to engage and advance student learning. 

• Push your colleagues and the principal in the direction of the new pedagogies linked to deep learning. 

These first two bullet points here are of particular relevance to my project, a partnership project, understanding student background and inspirations are central to what i am investigating.

The rest of teh article is below