What Are the Best Strategies For Surface to Deep Learning?

If it's done correctly, teaching is both rewarding and complicated. The rewarding part is when we see students achieve or overcome some new learning, whether that's social-emotional or academic. In these days of social media, teaching is rewarding because we get to see students who we had in our classrooms long ago, grow up and find a passion in their choice of career.

However, teaching is also complicated because it's not just about teaching students "stuff." Teaching is about using a variety of strategies to help students learn information they need for the future, and it's about teaching students how to ask questions in order to have some level of control over their own learning, so they find a love for learning.

In the End

Why does all of this matter? In Hattie's research he found that project-based learning (PBL), something many teachers like to use, has an average effect size of around .15 which is well below the .40 which represents a year's worth of growth for a year's input. One of the reasons for the low effect size is that we often throw students into PBL without providing them with surface level learning first...nor do we provide the strategies needed when they come to a point that is very challenging.

Talking about surface level, deep level and transfer learning, as well as the strategies to use at each point and the questions to ask, will help strengthen the learning that happens in the classroom, and can ultimately lead to a higher level of student engagement.