Nina's 3C Tools for Learning
Deep vs. Shallow Learning
I believe "summer slide" and "learning loss" are made up concepts.
This is a strong statement, I am aware of that, but please keep on reading and think about your own learning experiences: you still remember many things and concepts you learned as a kid, right? They have not vanished anywhere!
Only those things that have no significance are being forgotten.
There are basically just two different types of learning, when we are discussing about learning of certain concepts: Deep Learning and Shallow Learning (which is also called Surface Learning). The following short comparison explains the differences:
As we can see, there is a vast difference between these two approaches to learning. Most teachers I know would really want to provide their students with learning experiences that lead to deep learning. As students we all have learning dispositions that guide our actions either towards deep learning or surface learning - or, in some cases towards strategic learning, which means that we aim to get full points in exams and good grades, but we are still not interested in truly learning the material so that we could use it later.
Each of us utilizes surface learning sometimes. Usually with subjects that carry little significance to us but that we still need to some extent or with something that we don't expect to need after a while. Surface learning can be seen as a chosen learning strategy and is a well accepted choice in certain situations. What scares me is that some students use surface learning as their only strategy to learn or to even approach subjects to be learned. This inevitably leads to underachievement, and of course also losing the memorized bits of information, which we then call "learning loss". Yet, it is worth noticing that some strategic learners choose to use surface learning as their main learning strategy, in order to pass their exams and get good grades, while not being interested in really learning the content.
Overemphasizing learning goals and targets instruction may overlook the importance of the individual learning process, especially when focusing the attention on gradable projects and tests. In my own experience, excessive goal orientation seems to be a problem in American education, when the evaluation focuses on achieving the standard.
With instructional approaches focusing on memorizing information in the tests, the deep learning strategies remain unused. However, in today’s flood of information, one of the key roles of a teacher is to guide the students to gather meaningful information, by helping the student to structure their experiences and build their own understanding of basic concepts.
The research of deep and surface learning spans over decades
This really is not some new fad in modern education, but has been researched for more than 40 years. Also the American Psychological Association (APA) recognizes the importance of deep learning in their recommendation for teachers to take: the time to focus on deep, underlying concepts in a domain and promoting learning by understanding rather than focusing on surface-level elements in a learning situation or by memorizing the specific elements (p. 10).
Deep and deeper learning both refer to acquiring transferable knowledge through classroom experiences. The emphasis is in supporting students’ lifelong learning process. The term“deep learning” resulted from the original phenomenographic research of Marton and Säljö (1976)where researchers found out students having different approaches tolearning. These approaches describe how learners perceive tasks – either as disconnected piecesof information to be memorized in order to pass the exam (surface learning), oras knowledge to be constructed and understood in order to create new meanings(deep learning).
Deeper learning has also been defined by American Institutes for Research (Huberman, Bitter, Anthony,& O'Day, 2014) as “a set of competencies students must master in orderto develop a keen understanding of academic content and apply their knowledge to problems in the classroom and on the job”. I have been focusing on deep learning during my whole career, ever since I read about the original research about deep and surface learning, which finally led me to do my doctoral research (2017) about learner agency.
Deep learning requires ownership and individual engagement with the content. Here is a succinct definition for deep and surface level learning strategies: “the basic processing operations that describe how students react to and interact with the learning material and with people present in the learning environment in order to enhance domain-specific knowledge and skills” (Boekaerts, 2016, p. 81).
Deep learning approach aligns with learner agency, because both are focusing on those transformative learning experiences that contribute to students’ learning for life, and constructing their own understanding of the world.
References:
American Psychological Association. Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education.(2015). Top 20 principles from psychology for preK–12 teaching and learning. https://www.apa.org/ed/schools/teaching-learning/top-twenty-principles.pdf
Boekaerts, M. (2016). Engagement as an inherent aspect of the learning process. Learning and Instruction, 43, 76-83.
Huberman, M., Bitter, C., Anthony, J., & O’Day, J. (2014). The shape of deeper learning: strategies, structures, and cultures in deeper learning network high schools. Findings from the study of deeper learning opportunities and outcomes: Report 1. American Institutes for Research. Retrieved from: http://www.air.org/resource/spotlight-deeper-learning
Marton, F., & Säljö, R. (1976). On Qualitative Differences in Learning: I—Outcome and process*. British journal of educational psychology, 46(1), 4-11.
Learning how to learn
Teaching students about the concepts of deep and surface learning is important because awareness improves performance. Knowing how you learn is the first step for students, and we can easily talk about task orientation in the class - which includes the realization that tasks are not performed to please the teacher, but to make learning easier. Schools must help their students not only with learning information, but also with learning about their own lives and learning, because learning is always contextual and situational, and thus it cannot be separated from the learning environment, nor from out personality. Students make many cognitive and emotional choices every day, either knowingly or totally unaware of even being in the situation of choosing.
If students are not taught about these choices they have, if they are not given tools to understand how to regulate their own learning, if there is nobody helping them to find meaning in what we want them to learn, how can we expect them to thrive?
Dropouts do not leave school, because they did not learn enough facts. They leave because they do not find any meaning in the facts they learn.
Learning Dispositions
Learning and studying dispositions are the filters we use when facing a learning situation. Sometimes these dispositions are helpful, other times they may hinder the learning process.
We “inherit” these filters from family and friends – and media, too! – and learn to use the filters during all our learning experiences. We sort things into important and forgettable “bins”, based on the value we perceive the learning content to have. (Show me a teacher who has never heard a student ask: When will we ever use this?!)
The connection between learning and Real Life (RL) is important for all students, from kindergarten to higher education. Learning dispositions relate to the RL connection and thus regulate our interests, efforts and motivations to learn. Growth mindset is one part of the dispositions, as well as students’ self-efficacy beliefs and academic self-concept. Curiosity is yet another important concept for learning dispositions, because learning starts from wondering.
For some students curiosity or persistence can be enough to make them ready, willing and able to learn. Other times students need additional tools, and providing opportunities for risk-taking, concentration or independence might be necessary. In this case it is crucial to have a non-punitive assessment method to support the positive outcomes of learning. Rubrics and feedback loops to be used before final evaluation are very necessary to emphasize the benefits of deep engagement, and fostering the development of future learning dispositions. Communication, collaboration and co-regulation are important learning activities for building positive learning dispositions, because sharing one’s own RL with others leads to deeper learning and understanding.
I’m trying to figure out how to support students in creating a disposition that helps them to enjoy learning. The obvious reason for this is the fact that we engage much deeper in the activities we enjoy. And with deep engagement, we learn more. The information is not forgotten the next day or after the test, because it has some RL personal significance. Deep learning is seen to be more meaningful than reproductive learning (Lonka et al, 2004).
One possible answer for supporting deep learning dispositions is to adopt a teaching disposition that emphasizes authenticity and empowers engagement (Kreber, 2007). Authentic teaching focuses on the RL connection, helping students to see the importance of learning in everyday life, so that they can engage in deep, personal learning. Authenticity and supporting helpful learning dispositions makes it easier for every student to be successful in their studies – and not only in reaching graduation, but also engaging in life-long learning and building their own knowledge.
Authenticity seems to be one of the main threads in progressive education. I think it is important to remember that students are not learning for school, but for life. Their own personal RL, which is different from the one any of their friends and peers are living, is a major component of the learning disposition. That’s why discussing learning dispositions is so important. Students are making the value judgment of their learning anyway, so we as learning professionals should be helping them to find a helpful disposition.
We are preparing students for the world that is a complex mixture of cultures and diverse beliefs. Knowledge is so much more than a fixed bunch of facts to be memorized. While memorizing disconnected pieces of information may be a nice trick in trivia game, students need to understand the contexts and connections of that information. Where did it come from, and is it trustworthy? And an especially important question is: how can we use this information?
Misusing information is easy because it is shallow and has no situationality or contextuality – these are qualities of knowledge, where an individual has constructed an understanding of how given information fits into her/his worldview, beliefs and values. These are the same building blocks learning dispositions are made of. 21st century learning cannot be just memorizing factoids.
Learning disposition can help students find RL connections and to engage in deep learning. But this needs to be communicated clearly to the students. It is insane to imagine that every student would be 100% interested in deep learning every detail of their every schoolday. In some cases it might not be the content to be learned that a student perceives being important, but perhaps learning more about oneself and how to support one’s own learning. In this case content learning happens as a byproduct. Emphasizing the change, resilience and meaning-making as important parts of learning process leads students towards a discovery of positive learning dispositions and deeper, meaningful learning experiences.
— — —
Kreber, C. (2007). What‘s it really all about? The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as an Authentic Practice. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1(1), 3.
Lonka, K., Olkinuora, E., & Mäkinen, J. (2004). Aspects and prospects of measuring studying and learning in higher education. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 301-323.
Shum, S. B., & Crick, R. D. (2012,April). Learning dispositions and transferable competencies: pedagogy,modelling and learning analytics. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (pp. 92-101). ACM.
Volet, S., Vauras, M., & Salonen, P.(2009). Self-and social regulation in learning contexts: An integrative perspective. Educational psychologist, 44(4),215-226.
Motivation to Learn
The educational reality revolves around the fact that what is taught is not necessarily learned. And if the assessment is taken immediately after instruction, the facts and concepts are mainly held in our short term memory. When transfer happens, and students are able to use and apply the learned concepts in other situations, it also means they have been deep learned. Getting there requires collaboration between students and teachers: meaningful instruction from teacher's part, and buy-in from students' part.
"What's in it for me?" is the question every learner asks (more or less knowingly) before engaging in any given task. The answer may be an external reward (grade, certificate, badge, sticker, etc) or intrinsic interest (curiosity, need to know more about the subject, general interest), and this is where intrinsic/extrinsic motivation comes into the equation of teaching and learning.
Student motivation is one main contributor to students' educational success. From a pedagogical point of view students are either seen as intrinsically motivated learners and subjects of their own life and learning, or as objects of teaching and extrinsically motivated into performing tasks that the formal education provides them with and expects them to pass.
Extrinsically motivated students are more obedient and they react positively to grades, stickers, diplomas and other types of rewards. At best they're compliant and easy to deal with (at worst they become High School dropouts). Extrinsic motivation means the control of the learning being placed outside of the student, on the shoulders as parents and teachers - and the system.
Intrinsically motivated students are interested in learning, and often want more than just completing assignments or passing the tests. They are sometimes harder to "teach" because they have their own goals and are interested in gaining knowledge (that might or might not fit into the curriculum to be taught). Intrinsic motivation means the drive for learning coming from within, which can lead talented students to become underachievers if they are provided with external motivators.
Furthermore, recent research suggests1 that while (mental and/or emotional) learning environment affects students' motivational beliefs, their own motivational characteristics should be taken into account while planning the instruction. Teaching intrinsically motivated students is very different from teaching students with strong extrinsic motivation.
Of course the situation seldom is this black and white. We all employ both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation during our learning. The balance is what matters. Well balanced motivation helps students to be successful in their studies.
Defining success is not easy, and sometimes we get tangled in details and want to define students’ success as mastery of a single subject or unit, or course. In contemporary education negotiating meaning is more important than ever before, just to be sure that we are talking about the same concept/word/idea – and the word "success" certainly has several different connotations. We must be very careful, though, not to kill the intrinsic learning motivation by applying unnecessary power over students, and forcing them into performing according to expectations that don't contribute to their learning (i.e. practices that benefit school more than students). Often the use of power is disguised as success – but do students really need to perform according to minor details, or should we emphasize understanding the concepts and entities, so that the learned skill is transferable and students are motivated to learn and not just pass?
To me student success means simply making myself unnecessary as a teacher by empowering my students become autonomous learners, who can work independently and who know where to find the information and guidance they need. This requires handing over the tools for learning to students, and trusting in their motivation and drive to get their learning done, but having open and honest interactions with students to be able to help when needed.
Intrinsic vs. extrinsic control and motivation
Have you noticed how there are people who seem to “happen to the world” and others who have the “world happen to them”? People who are proactive and engaged, or others who are passive and alienated?
People who happen to the world are the ones who make their own choices about their lives, learning and everything. Isn’t that how things should be? People being active and make decisions about their future, and shaping their own thinking. How about people with the passive approach to life, people who let the world happen to them? What is their learning like?
Psychologists use the term “locus of control” to describe whether people believe that they can control the items and actions of their own lives. Intrinsic control means that I am responsible for my own life. Extrinsic control means that someone else decides for me, and I need those others to come and save me from hard situations.
But, it also means that my achievements are controlled by external factors concentrated to explanations like “It’s about luck”, “This is too hard”, and “I don’t know xyz”- the last one being super funny as there is more information at the reach of our fingertips than ever before. And after teaching for a few years you have pretty much heard them all.
My favourite one is: “S/he made me do it”. Really? Did s/he now? And how, exactly?
Why this long intro, you may ask. Well, much of our academic success depends on what we believe about ourselves and education, and the interactions of the two. Do we believe in fixed (static intelligence and talent) or growth mindset (developing intelligence)? Researchers strongly recommend the latter one:
“Encouraging a malleable (growth) mindset may help to sustain children's intrinsic motivation, thereby enhancing both academic success and life-long learning”[1].
Learning motivation can be externalized in the very similar way as the locus of control. One of the things I have learned from my experiences in education is that people, who are active participants in their own learning, also achieve much better results. Intrinsic motivation (i.e. doing something because we like to do it) is a much stronger motivator for learning than extrinsic motivation (i.e. doing something because of a reward, or avoiding punishment by doing it)[2]. Every child born to this world likes learning, which is also a survival skill, and thus a necessity. Somewhere along the way we lose that enjoyment of learning, and start to do things because others ask or mandate us to do them.
To foster intrinsic motivation and control in our students we need one more thing to fall into the right place: self-efficacy. This is a concept created by professor Bandura[3], and it is very different from just having high self-esteem, or being confident about our skills or knowledge. Self-efficacy also includes our belief about having an effect in our own learning, which is exactly why providing students with choices is essential for good education.
American Psychology Association also agrees with this:
”Numerous studies have found that students who are more involved in setting educational goals are more likely to reach their goals. When students perceive that the primary focus of learning is to obtain external rewards, such as a grade on an exam, they often perform more poorly, think of themselves as less competent, and report greater anxiety than when they believe that exams are simply a way for them to monitor their own learning.” [4]
One part of using students’ intrinsic motivation to learn is providing them with open-ended questions, both in classroom but also during assessment. This, of course, presents the requirement for testing being designed as performance assessments instead of objective (i.e. multiple-choice) exams. Memorizing pieces of information is less motivating than understanding entities. Why does it surprise us then, if students resort to their extrinsic learning motivation when presented less meaningful tasks?
Even scarier it gets when young students are required to focus on tasks that are neither interesting nor meaningful for them, and then they are labeled according to their achievements in those tasks. Often students underperform in these assessments. This lowers not only their learning motivation, but also their belief of having an effect on their own learning. Why would we want to teach students to become passive and alienated of their own learning and life?
If you stop and think I am sure you can categorize your friends/students/coworkers into those two categories, people who are active in making their choices, and those who let their life happen to them. How could we empower them all to be proactive and engaged?
Intrinsic motivation and student autonomy
This is a simplified picture of student autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Our knowledge and beliefs are references to the life we live, so living and learning cannot be separated from each other, no matter how old - or young - the students are. The picture below shows the two dimensions of learning dispositions our students have.
Nobody can be located only in one end of the axis, but moves between the extremes, depending on the task or challenge perceived. The texts in the corners just summarize some qualities and behaviours students display when approaching the end of the axis.
Thinking of a student in up left corner - combining autonomy and intrinsic motivation- they may not be easy to teach, because they have so strong perceptions and opinions of their own, and want to do things their own way. Up right corner shows characteristics of autonomous but only passing oriented students - they don't want to reflect; they just want to get their tasks done and move on.
Students with little confidence but a high need to learn (low left corner) are the ones who most often will be successful - if they are assured there is help for them available. I am most concerned about dependent students with very extrinsic motivation - a reward very far in the future (graduation) may not be enough to help them get through school.
Students' learning depends on their internal academic self-concept, i.e. their own beliefs about their competence as learners. We really need to communicate this, loud and clear, to our students who may have horrible previous experiences of education.
And, of course, as intrinsically motivated students are much more likely to be successful in their studies than those with extrinsic motivation. Depending on the feedbacks tudents reeive they may move right or left (or up and down) on the axis. How could we help more students become autonomous and intrinsically motivated learners?
References:
[1] Haimovitz, K., Wormington, S. V., & Corpus, J. H. (2011). Dangerous mindsets: How beliefs about intelligence predict motivational change. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(6), 747-752.
[2] Hidi, S., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2000). Motivating the academically unmotivated: A critical issue for the 21st century. Review of educational research, 70(2), 151-179.
[3] Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control.
[4] http://www.apa.org/research/action/success.aspx
Tapola, A., & Niemivirta, M. (2008). The role of achievement goal orientations in students' perceptions of and preferences for classroom environment. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(2), 291-312.
Learning to learn
One important part of formal education is to help our students to know how they can help their own learning process. Teaching the fundamental learning skills (for example: obtaining information, memorization and retrieval skills, critical thinking and making connections) from the early grades is one part of Finland's educational success.
As teachers we definitely must help students with reading to learn, knowing what is important, skills to categorize and organize information, practicing retrieval, maintaining intrinsic motivation - and many other learning related meta-cognitive skills! Teaching definitely is a hard job!
For this 3C learning page I have written some articles about learning dispositions, motivation, deep learning and other things. I hope they are helpful!