Deeper Learning Principles

The sources of advice for educators to consult as the design curriculum and deliver instruction is expanding. In recent weeks, I have been interested in the literature for those who design online learning environments for higher education. Although I have been interested in this field for some time, it was not until I read a Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Instruction that I saw just how informative this could be for K-12 educators.

In 2002, Colleen Carmen and Jeremy Haefner (see the link below) reviewed some of the then-recent research on human learning and articulated Deeper Learning Principles, explaining how these can be addressed through online classrooms. Their work still deserves attention not only because it does identify how online classrooms can be used to support education, but because they identify and define five Deeper Learning Principles:

1) Learning is social: Beyond "cooperative groups" or "having students work together," Carmen and Heafner point out that interaction between students and faculty and among students is key to learning. Feedback is example of social interaction in learning, but they remind us that rich feedback (that middle school educators have been doing for decades) is key.

2) Learning is active: Active learning depends on real-world and complex problems; simply having students "do projects" is not sufficient for active learning.

3) Learning is contextual: Contextual learning includes students' preconceptions and build upon their experiences, and becomes connected to and demonstrated within the students' worlds; as students learn, they add to their frameworks.

4) Learning is engaging: Students are engaged by diverse instruction, high expectations and challenge (but non-threatening!) classrooms.

5) Learning is student-owned: Allowing students to reflect on their experiences, plan for next steps, and organize and apply their learning all promote ownership of learning.

Most good middle school practitioners will see their classrooms as spaces in which these principles are realized. Of course, we sometimes need to be reminded of what we mean by these words, and we need to be able to point those who "talk-the-talk" but do not "walk-the-walk" to scholars who clearly and completely define the vocabulary we use:

Mind over Matter