Giving Compass' Take:

• Jal Mehta explains how teachers can shift their strategies to facilitate deeper learning in high school students. 

• What role can funders play in supporting this process? What resources do teachers in your community need? 

• Learn how intelligent tutoring systems can help make deep learning possible. 

In most high schools, students recreate science experiments with predictable outcomes. However, because science is the study of the unknown, Mehta appreciates schools that ask students to take on problems without easy answers.

Mehta’s undergraduate degree was interdisciplinary. He appreciates seeing youth take on extended and integrated challenges but he also sees value in the exploration of disciplines.

To make room for more co-constructed exploration, he urges schools to pare back on the “need to know” list and create more opportunity to go deep. “In life, you mostly need skills to do things,” argues Mehta and that often comes from a hard sprint to a public product.

While a fan of project-based learning he advises educators not to conflate deeper learning with PBL because not all of it is high quality (see HQPBL.org).

With so much opportunity to create powerful learning experiences, Mehta’s school visits left him with a bias towards action–he’d like to see more experimentation aiming at deeper learning. But he doesn’t expect a single model to emerge. As he observed in his last book, Allure of Order, “Not every form will solve every problem.”

About your own search for deeper learning, Mehta urges, “Think of your students as apprentices,” try more whole-game learning. Make room for depth over breadth. And, give up some control.

Read the full article about facilitating deeper learning by Jal Mehta at Getting Smart.