Deep Learning is a term that is not new to education. Long have educators strived to develop learning experiences that go beyond surface learning and help students to develop connections to learning at a level that demonstrates deep understanding, application and an awareness of the interconnectedness of learning concepts. Why then is it so hard?
There are many challenges to creating learning environments and opportunities that provide deep learning experiences. Two of the missing components are in pedagogy and assessment. Pedagogies provide the ‘how’ of how learning is achieved. To achieve deep learning requires New Pedagogies. Likewise, how do we know that Deep Learning is occurring and that the New Pedagogies are working? That is where New Measures provide evidence and information to assist schools in making decisions around constructing deep learning experiences.
So how does the New Pedagogies initiative work?
It’s a global partnership aiming to implement deep learning goals across whole education systems that are enabled by new pedagogies and accelerated by technology.
Students across the globe will be engaged in deeper level learning and provided the skills to be life-long learners, creative, connected and collaborative problem solvers who can successfully participate and innovate in our increasingly interconnected world. Global education stakeholders and their business partners, will work together to address a key education challenge: how educators can design and practice teaching and learning that lead to more successful futures for all students.
Who is in it and what’s it about?
Countries are part of the Global Partnership will include 1,000 schools across the world. The goal is to build collective capacity to define and measure deep learning, investigate and share models of New Pedagogies, use collaborative tools to design and measure deep learning as well as learning outcomes, and leverage change leadership to foster deep learning. Central to this holistic approach to education transformation is the role that digital technologies play in enabling and accelerating learning.
All partnering schools will share consistent assessment approaches and collaborate in identifying and further innovating and scaling the most promising practices and tools that enable deep learning. In Australia we have 100 schools participating, 80 in Victoria and 20 in Tasmania.
What are the intentions and success criteria?
The intent of the initiative is to engage education systems in collective effort to mobilize deep learning, identify deep learning work within those systems, capture and cultivate new pedagogies that advance deep learning and operationalize, refine and validate measures for deep learning
The success criteria of the initiative is defined by being able to produce measureable results of making learning more engaging and productive, produce measureable results of new pedagogies driving deeper learning and to build enough capacity so education systems start collaborating on creating their own transformation methodology.
How do I find out more or get involved?
Its not often that an opportunity to participate in a initiative which is international, and involves such great thinkers around education. Victorian schools are fortunate to be able to participate through an open expression of interest process, which closes on the 3rd of March 2014. To find out more, the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning website provides more. In particular the two White Papers; Towards a New End: New Pedagogies for Deep Learning and A Rich Seam by Michael Fullan and Maria Langworthy provide a detailed examination of the concepts explored in the initiative also the reading is great professional learning!
With teachers in schools all over the world thinking and working towards the goal of deep learning, the real beneficiary is the students – after all 21st Century learning isn’t in the future. It’s right now!
The expression of interest form can be found below.