Reading+-+Week+4.+Masters+Geoff+2004

Masters, G – Promoting Deep Learning

Pressures from crowded curricula are reducing opportunities to develop deep understandings of subject matter.

The challenge to teaching classes within which students have widely differing levels of achievement can add to these pressures.

Government emphasis on minimal achievement levels results in more focus on lower achieving students at the expense of in depth learning for those who have already achieved this.

Pressures of rapidly changing knowledge meaning teachings of today may be redundant in the future discourage deep learning.

Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000) research identified the pressures of attempting to teach and learn large amounts of factual material are not conducive to the deep learning of subject matter; that students often can perform well on traditional examinations and test without having deep understandings of important concepts and principles; and that, far from being irrelevant, extensive knowledge is essential to deep learning and to the development of high levels of competence in most areas of learning.

Schools and universities need to promote deep learning by developing students' understandings of key principles and concepts within particular domains of learning: the big ideas that provide a conceptual framework for organising and understanding factual knowledge and information within that domain.

According to Bransford, Brown and Cocking, it is only through deep learning of this kind that students are helped to understand why, when and how concepts and principles are relevant.

If deep learning is to be encouraged, assessments must be designed to tap understanding rather than the ability to memorise and recall large amounts of material. They must be designed to provide information about the depth of students' understandings of key concepts and principles, including their conceptions and mental models.