Creative Teaching and Learning

Deeper Learning -Towards What? The Nature of Deep Understanding

In the fourth of a ground-breaking series of articles on Next Level Learning, Tina Grotzer of Harvard University and Project Zero, analyses what we need students to know about knowledge.

Educators hear a lot about deeper learning and how important it is to help students get beyond superficial knowledge in order to develop robust understandings that will serve them well in the world beyond school. It is certainly important for developing Next Level Learners who have the skills to thrive in a turbulent and uncertain world.

But often “deeper learning” is ambiguously described as pedagogies focused on more active processing. Active processing in and of itself is a good thing as it invites thoughtful engagement in learning. However, the question, “Towards what end?”, needs to be addressed.

In the framework of Teaching for Understanding (TfU),1 the mission of education is defined by the carefully selected Understanding Goals that educators identify. These differ from objectives in that the understandings that students are intended to reach are explicitly articulated. For instance, an objective might say, “Students will understand the role that perspectives play in history.”

In contrast, an understanding goal might say, “Students will understand that multiple perspectives contribute to a richer conception of historical events.” One could argue, quite simply, that deeper in terms of the given understanding goals is necessarily better and teaches may have a clear sense of what that means for particular concepts.

What are the characteristics of deeper understanding

However, it still behooves us to ask about the nature of deep understanding, how it is characterized and what features it has.2 Next Level Learners need to develop understanding that is both deep and flexible. In a later article in this series, we will consider flexible understanding. Here, we focus on deep understanding. What does deeper understanding, in general, look like and how can one judge whether a particular pedagogy is helping them to get there?

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