New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL)

Fullan & Langworthy (2014) A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning. Pearson

This is actually a 99-page report authored by a renown lead scholar in educational change, Michael Fullan and his co-author, Maria Langworthy. There are 8 chapters altogether.

The report starts with the need for a fundamental change in education. Fundamental change is crucial since 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. Furthermore, students today want to be actively engaged, they want to determine the path of their own learning, chart their own learning journeys. Technology tools have exploded the way they interact with the world around them, and it has changed how they want to be in the classroom.

Next is the discussion about the three components of the new pedagogies. The components are deep learning tasks, new learning partnerships and digital tools and resources.

Deep learning tasks are guided by clear and appropriately challenging learning goals, goals that ideally incorporate both curricular content and students’ interests or aspirations; specific and precise success criteria- how well goals are being achieved; incorporating feedback and formative evaluation cycles into the learning and doing processes and building students’ self-confidence and proactive dispositions. In deep learning tasks, students also often partner with teachers in designing the structure or process of the task. Many argue that a critical element of such tasks is giving students authentic choice over what they learn and how they execute the learning.  “It works through giving them voice and choice.” It is through deep learning tasks that students in the new pedagogies gain experience in developing their aspirations, in taking the initiative to learn, in learning to persevere through tough challenges, and in doing real knowledge work. In short, these tasks form the practical bridge between learning and doing.

Deep learning tasks redesign learning activities to:

      i.   re-structure students’ learning of curricular content in more challenging and engaging ways made possible by digital tools and resources.

     ii.    give students real experiences in creating and using new knowledge in the world beyond the classroom

    iii.        develop and assess key future skills, what Fullan has called the 6 Cs

The 6C are

1. Character education — honesty, self-regulation and responsibility, hard work, perseverance, empathy, self-confidence, personal health and well-being, career and life skills.
2. Citizenship — global knowledge, sensitivity to and respect for other cultures, active involvement in addressing issues of human and environmental sustainability.
3. Communication — communicate effectively orally, in writing and with a variety of digital tools; listening skills.
4. Critical thinking and problem solving — think critically to design and manage projects, solve problems, make effective decisions using a variety of digital tools and resources.
5. Collaboration — work in teams, learn from and contribute to the learning of others, social networking skills, empathy in working with diverse others.
6. Creativity and imagination — economic and social entrepreneurialism, considering and pursuing novel ideas, and leadership for action.

There are four important aspects of building new learning partnership that are relationships, feedback, students aspiration and learning to learn. Trust between a teacher and a student is essential in forming new learning partnerships. In the new pedagogies human relationships take a new and more central place in the learning experience. Teachers become co-learners to their students, experts at asking great, open-ended questions and modelling the learning process required to answer those questions.

Getting the feedback is essential not only to promote learning progress; it contributes the right kind of feedback to the development of essential skills needed for students’ ability to cope with hardships. A growing body of research is demonstrating that non-academic character skills such as grit, tenacity, have a strong relationship with an individual’s capacity to overcome challenges and perseverance and achieve long-term success. Research is underway to better understand how these character skills can intentionally be developed, with initial evidence pointing to the levers of supportive learning conditions and getting the right kind of feedback. Research has shown that the ‘right kind’ of feedback is that which encourages taking on hard challenges and focuses on students’ efforts rather than their achievements.

As for students’ aspiration, when the learning is not connected to their own relevance, their interests, their own needs, then engagement does not occur. Connecting learning to students’ real lives and aspirations is often what makes the new pedagogies so engaging for students.

Students learn to learn by becoming meta-cognitive observers of their own and others’ learning processes. They do this by defining their own learning goal and success criteria; monitoring their own learning, critically examining their own work and incorporating feedback from peers, teachers, parents or simply other people in general; and finally, using all of these to deepen awareness of how they function in the learning process. Students apply what they learn about effective teaching and learning in different contexts; reflecting what works and what does not; and developing mastery of the learning process over time.