Questions to ask when planning for deep learning

“How does this particular lesson fit within the larger enterprise of understanding I am striving for? Teachers can then begin to focus on the goals of a particular lesson: With which ideas do I want students to begin to grapple? Where are the complexities and nuances that we need to explore? How can I push students’ understanding and move it forward? With these questions answered, teachers are ready to identify the source material and the kinds of thinking that might best serve the exploration of that material. Only then are teachers in a good position to select a thinking routine as a tool or structure for that exploration.” – “The Power of Making Thinking Visible” Ron Ritchhart & Mark Church - Page 7 p4

The process for planning for learning is undoubtedly challenging. It is a process that requires us as educators to balance and respond to multiple and frequently divergent pressures. It is a juggling act. On the one hand we have the demands of the curriculum. In this air between our hands, we have the needs and interests of our students, the demands of standardised assessments, community expectations, school and system pedagogical models, and cross-curriculum priorities to name just a few of the balls we are juggling. Our aim is to bring all of these into a cohesive whole. But where do we begin and how do we judge what matters most?

When we approach this task with key questions in mind, we focus our thinking on how we might plan learning experiences and opportunities that will have the impact we desire. These are the sorts of questions Ron Ritchhart encourages us to ponder as we plan the lessons we will teach. The questions shared in the paragraph above invite us to consider how the lesson we are planning for will fit within “the larger enterprise of understanding”. Thinking about this matter of the larger enterprise of understanding is a crucial step if we are to plan for an arc of learning that has real bite but thinking at this scale is not always the norm. 

In a teaching for understanding framework, teachers are encouraged to develop understanding goals in multiple flavours. At the largest scale, there are course through lines. These are understanding goals at the scale of the significant understandings at the heart of a discipline. In Science, students should develop across their years of learning an understanding of the scientific method. In History, the concept of change is an inescapable, recurring theme. A level down from these are the unit long understanding goals which communicate the essential concepts to be unpacked throughout a unit of learning, and these are developed through more compact understanding goals that might be achieved through a lesson or short sequence of performances that the students engage in and with. The key is to be clear on what these understanding goals are, what they look like, how they fit together and how they might be achieved. 

The questions that Ron and Mark invite us to engage with are rich with possibility. They invite us to consider the three key pieces of the puzzle of how understanding goals are best approached. There is a question for identifying how the learning intention in front of us for this lesson fits into the longer-term goals we have for our learners. There is thinking about how we begin and an important focus on the ideas that our students will begin to grapple with. After all, learning is a consequence of thinking, and as Dylan Wiliam:

“The crucial thing is that teachers are involved in a creative act of engineering environments within which learning takes place. Teachers are responsible for creating those learning environments but you cannot do the learning for the learner.” - Dylan Wiliam

There is consideration of the complexity involved and the levels of nuance that comes with all learning. Surely if we hope that our students will achieve deep learning, we must engage our students with learning that offers depth and thus we must have developed in our minds a conception of where the deep learning lies. Finally, there is consideration for how we will push for understanding. 

What is crucial is that we consider these questions before we approach other aspects of the planning process. Yes, we will consider pedagogical moves. We will plan for the thinking that our students will require. We will plan a rich range of learning activities and use a variety of stimulating resources. We will utilise a variety of learning scaffolds, and these may include routines for thinking. We will consider learning intentions, and we may publish these for our learners to digest as they learn. We will do all of these things, but we will do them with our eye always on the larger enterprise of understanding that we are striving for. 

by Nigel Coutts

Getting started with Deep-Learning - Part B

With our goal of deep-learning in mind where do we begin and what learning opportunities might result in this? Having clarified our key terms of understanding, learning and deep, we can turn to a set of questions which might be of use as we plan the learning our students will engage in along their way. 

What do my students need to understand here?

This is one of the most powerful questions we can ask when we are unpacking our curriculum. To be sure there is much that we might want our students to know and do, but there are also fundamental understandings that our students must understand. Take fractions in mathematics as an example. We might want our students to know about the parts of fractions, the numerator and denominator. We might want them to know how to find pairs of equivalent fractions, how to compare fractions, how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. These are without a doubt important, but unless students understand what a fraction is nothing else we teach them will make any sense. Students must understand that a fraction is one number, not two and that it represents a relationship between the numerator and the denominator. 

In their recently published research, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine seek to explore the characteristics of teachers who encourage deep learning. From their search for Deeper Learning in American high schools, they found that there was a remarkably common set of beliefs amongst teachers who were successful in teaching for deep understanding. Such teachers had a high level of pedagogical knowledge and a preferred approach to teaching. They were deliberate and consistent in their approach and believed in the methods they used. They had a stance towards teaching as an act of igniting a spark, encouraging curiosity and interest more so than filling a bucket with knowledge. They could describe seminal experiences which had shaped their approach as teachers. Defining moments of understanding from which they came to see the role they might play if they adopted a particular stance. They had these characteristics, and they perceived the discipline they taught not as a body of knowledge to be learned but as a way of making sense of the world.

To a person, they saw their disciplines as open-ended rather than close-ended fields, meaning that they saw their fields as places where people had constructed provisional knowledge, rather than as places where there was a finished set of answers that needed to be passed on or “professed” to others. . . If teachers saw their fields as fixed or inherited bodies of knowledge, teaching as transmission seemed like a logical and efficient approach. . . . Conversely, if the fields were understood as places where different people would develop different interpretations, experiments, and approaches to problems, it seemed natural to invite students into this process of inquiry, connecting them to the generations of scholars and seekers of knowledge who had come before.

These teachers understood the true nature of their discipline. They saw themselves as members of a profession that was alive and to which they might contribute new knowledge. Their most valuable knowledge is an understanding of the epistemological foundation of the discipline. They may also possess sound discipline-specific knowledge, but they know that possessing this alone is not sufficient. A scientist is not defined by their recall of the periodic table but by the manner in which they approach puzzles and ambiguity. An author may require a sound knowledge of grammar, but they are defined by their approach to communication as a creative act between their language choices and their audience. Each discipline has its unique epistemological foundation, and deep learning is achieved when teachers invite their students to become participants in this.

Every discipline has fundamental understandings which must be mastered. Each key learning area within our curriculum, similarly, has fundamental understandings attached. Our first task as we plan for deep-learning is to identify and make sense of these fundamental understandings. The following extract from the rationale of the New South Wales History K-10 Syllabus reveals the presence of these understandings within the curriculum:

History is a disciplined process of inquiry into the past that helps to explain how people, events and forces from the past have shaped our world. It allows students to locate and understand themselves and others in the continuum of human experience up to the present. History provides opportunities for students to explore human actions and achievements in a range of historical contexts.

If this is what we hope our children will come to understand about History, how do we ensure this is what is achieved? How do we avoid a scenario in which History is viewed by students as a subject that requires them to memorise sequences of events for a past that is disconnected from their daily lives? Such thoughtfully crafted statements, combined with our beliefs about the value of what we teach deserve our close attention. Asking, "What do my students need to understand here?” should be the start of our planning journey. 

What does this understanding look like? 

It is all well and good to say that we want our students to understand something, but if we are not clear on what this looks like, we will have a hard time taking their learning in this direction. Going back to the example of an understanding of a fraction, how will I represent this understanding in ways that focus on the essential understanding that a fraction is one number, a relationship between numerator and denominator? If I show students fractions written on a whiteboard and explain to them that the top is called the numerator and the bottom is the denominator, it is unlikely that they will understand the fraction as a single number. If I teach them to recall that the Denominator is the bottom number because denominator and down start with the same letter, have I helped the situation at all? Instead, I need to invite my students to explore various physical representations of a fraction, to compare them, to see how one fraction can be represented in many ways with various materials and to associate the written representation with what they see in the physical world. 

Sometimes we need to Zoom In and Out as we examine the understandings we aim for and what they might look like. As a teacher of Geography, for example, I might agree with the curriculum that "Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.”. When I drill down into the content and the particular outcomes to be addressed, this understanding can become fragmented and lost. Students in Years 3 & 4 in NSW are required to engage with four Outcomes which contribute to a stage appropriate understanding of the contribution of Geography. They are as follows:

• GE2-1 examines features and characteristics of places and environments
  GE2-2 describes the ways people, places and environments interact

• GE2-3 examines differing perceptions about the management of places and environments

• GE2-4 acquires and communicates geographical information using geographical tools for inquire

Zooming in to just the first outcome sees students looking closely at places and environments and describing in geographical language what they see. Digging deeper, students would need to have an understanding of what we mean by places and environments, and they would require a vocabulary for their description of features and characteristics. As teachers, we might imagine that we are teaching future geographers as we provide them with lists of words to paste diligently onto photos of remote locations with exciting geographical features. To the students, Geography has become another set of facts to be remembered for an upcoming exam. We have too quickly Zoomed into a level where the content hides the understanding. 

Zoom back and consider the outcomes together, and we see the need to clarify both what we want students to understand and what it might look like. I begin to see a set of questions that a geographer might ask emerge, and these can powerfully frame our approach to the discipline. What is special about this place or environment? How do people interact with it, and how do the features we observe shape these interactions? How is this place managed and who thinks this is a good plan? What resources will we use as we examine this place and how people interact with it? When we ask these questions and engage our learners with them, we are inviting them not to study geographical content but to think and act like Geographers. If in our minds, we have an informed imagining of what a Geographer does, then we can use this mental model as a guide while we plan learning experiences.

What experiences will build this understanding?

This question is aimed at moving us beyond thinking about what our students will do. If I want my students to understand fractions, then I must give them opportunities to examine multiple representations of fractions. If I want them to be able to notice patterns in collections of objects or numbers, I need them to examine closely collections with obvious patterns so that when they confront less obvious examples, they are armed with a clear image of what a pattern is and what one is not. If I want them to think like Historians or Geographers or Scientists, I need to engage them the types of experiences which are common for such practitioners. I am unlikely to encourage students to think like scientists if their experience of the discipline revolves around following recipes. If the only experiments my students conduct involve following directions off the board, I should not be surprised if they do not understand the value of a well-written hypothesis. 

Looking back at the Geographical outcomes discussed above, what experiences might build the desired understanding? A worksheet or textbook probably won’t work. It might put a lot of Geographical information in front of their eyes, but little to no understanding is likely to result. A field study with the purpose of conducting a geographical study of a place or environment and its interactions with people that leads to a report to an agency on the patterns of land use evident has real meaning and requires students to think like geographers. Such an experience would require students to gather information using geographical tools and vocabulary, and in doing so, they would appreciate the utility of such tools. 

Asking these three questions as we begin the planning process can have a profound effect in moving us towards teaching for deep-learning. Routinely asking "What do my students need to understand here?, What does this understanding look like?, and What experiences will build this understanding? as we plan and then deliver, learning maintains our focus on the fundamental understandings. These questions move our thinking away from a laundry list of content to be covered. When we focus on these questions, our teaching targets the learning that matters most and in doing so, we find pathways towards a less bloated curriculum.

By Nigel Coutts 

Mehta, J. & Fine, S. (2019) In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School Harvard University Press.

Getting started with teaching for deep learning.

There is an understandable interest in deep-learning, after all, who wants their students to have a superficial understanding of the content. Read the marketing of almost any school and you are likely to find some statement about the deep-learning that is achieved as a result of their excellent teaching and learning platform. Likewise, ask any teacher about their philosophy of teaching and you will hear how they engage their students with learning that promotes a deep-understanding. 

The trouble is, when you look at what is happening, there are often degrees of inconsistency between the stated aims and the reality of what is achieved on a day to day basis. Teaching for this sort of deep-learning is challenging and doing so routinely can be exhausting. 

Research by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine in schools across the United States of America confirm that even in schools with a reputation for deep learning, the reality of the experience often falls short. This research led to the publication of “In Search of Deeper Learning” in which the authors note that few schools manage to achieve deep learning across all of their programmes. To be sure, there were pockets of excellence, and much to be celebrated, but very few schools came close to systematically embracing deep-learning. 

Most classrooms were spaces to sit passively and listen. Most academic work instructed students to recall, or minimally apply, what they had been told. When we asked students the purpose of what they were doing, the most common responses were “I dunno—it’s in the textbook,” and “maybe it’ll help me in college.” (Mehta & Fine. 2019)

With this in mind, what strategies might we routinely adopt so that deep-learning can be achieved and sustained? How do we get started and what pedagogies are likely to have the desired effect while avoiding fatigue for teachers and students?

We begin with the planning process. Deep-learning is not going to be achieved if we rely on the curriculum or packets of resources as a guide. Instead, we begin with a set of questions that allow us as teachers to clarify what it is that we want our students to understand as a results of their learning. 

There are some crucial concepts to be unpacked here and when we begin the process of teaching for deep-learning it is important that we clarify what these concepts mean to us. Perhaps the most important concept to be unpacked is understanding. Like most terms in common use, we feel we have a sense of what the word understanding means up to the point where we share our definition with a colleague and find that our’s does not align well with their’s. 

How we define understanding is a crucial point when our goal is deep-learning. Indeed, our goal is likely to be understanding. Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of thinking skills is commonly used to identify what are referenced as high-order-thinking skills. In Bloom’s taxonomy, understanding is a low order skill, one rung on the ladder above remembering. It requires the learner to comprehend what they have remembered and be able to explain it to another person. By contrast, in teaching for understanding or understanding by design terms, understanding requires a capacity to use what one knows and can do in unique context. In this definition, understanding would combine the ability to apply, analyse, synthesise and evaluate knowledge, concepts, ideas, skills and capabilities. 

The critical distinction is that in a deep-learning model, understanding involves the capacity to do useful things with one’s knowledge and skills; a performative perspective of understanding. According to Blythe and associates,  (1998) “The performance perspective says, in brief, that understanding is a matter of being able to do a variety of thought-provoking things with a topic, such as explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalizing, applying, analogizing, and representing the topic in new ways.”

The idea of learning is similarly open to interpretation. In this instance we are describing an active process that the learner is heavily engaged in and ultimately responsible for. This goes far beyond what might be achieved through mere exposure to content regardless of how well it might be delivered.

“Meaningful learning cannot be delivered to high school students like pizza to be consumed or videos to be observed. Lasting learning develops largely through the labor of the student, who must be enticed to participate in a continuous cycle of studying, producing, correcting mistakes, and starting over again.“  (Newman. 1992 p.3)

The other key term to be unpacked here is “deep”. What might be special about deep learning?  According to Mehta & Fine (2019), “Research suggests that deep learners have schemas that enable them to see how discrete pieces of knowledge in a domain are connected; rather than seeing isolated facts, they see patterns and connections because they understand the underlying structures of the domain they are exploring.” Deep learning goes beyond perceiving the world as a collection of facts to be understood in isolation but requires the capacity and a disposition to bring ideas together in novel ways. Deep learning is the difference between seeing a painting of a hay bale and the capacity to extrapolate from that same image as a lucid commentary on the evolving relationship between artist, environment and society. 

The discussion of these terms offered above is intended only to offer a possible interpretation. The crucial part of defining terms of such importance as these is the process rather than the product. While it might be convenient to find and publish to stakeholders a definition of key terms, engaging teachers in the process of making meaning is likely to be more productive. A crucial process in any change effort is the building of ownership of it by those ultimately charged with implementing it. With this in mind, engaging stakeholders in the process of defining these terms can be a significant role in building support. The collective understanding of these key terms that is developed through the initial phase of moving towards teaching for “deep-learning” will allow them to fulfil their place as the ultimate goal of subsequent teaching and learning.

In the next article we will explore essential questions to be asked as we begin to strategise for deep-learning. 

By Nigel Coutts

Blythe, T. (1998) "The teaching for understanding guide”, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Mehta, J. & Fine, S. (2019) In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School Harvard University Press.

Newmann, F. (1992)  “Introduction,” in Fred Newmann, ed., Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools (New York: Teachers College Press.