Yang Qing: Out of the three major misunderstandings of "classroom deep learning"
Author | Qing Yang is an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences and a doctor of education
Cultivating students' core literacy and key abilities is inseparable from the attention to students' classroom learning. As a learning method that pays attention to students' deep understanding and promotes students' all-round development, deep learning has become the focus of theoretical research and practical exploration. However, in practice, some teachers have misunderstandings due to their one-sided understanding of deep learning in the classroom, which directly "affects" the effectiveness of students' classroom learning.
Therefore, combing through the existing research on deep learning, clarifying the current teachers' misunderstanding of "deep learning in the classroom", analyzing the reasons for its occurrence and proposing corresponding strategies are of great significance for whether deep learning can truly "land" in the classroom and promote the all-round development of students.
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An overview of deep learning research
The concept of "deep learning" stems from the development of computer science, artificial intelligence and brain science. In the field of education, American scholars Matton and Saryo took the lead in starting experimental research on deep learning, and in the article "The Essential Differences of Learning: Results and Processes" published in 1976, the concept of "deep learning" was first proposed for shallow learning that only isolated memory and non-critically received knowledge.
In early research, deep learning was a way of learning relative to shallow learning. Researchers believe that deep learning is a high-level cognitive processing, understanding-based, active learning method, corresponding to low-level cognitive processing, mechanical memory, passive shallow learning, such as Maton, Saryo, Biggs and so on. Correspondingly, He Ling and Li Jiahou, as the first scholars in China to publish research papers related to "deep learning", are also based on the contrast between deep learning and shallow learning, believing that deep learning is the learning of new ideas and facts critically by learners on the basis of understanding, and integrate them into the original cognitive structure, connect between many ideas, and can transfer existing knowledge to new situations, make decisions and solve problems. With the advancement of research, researchers have a richer and more extensive research on deep learning, mainly including three aspects.
The first is to excavate the essential characteristics of deep learning. Entviesl proposes that deep learning has four characteristics: connecting ideas, finding models and principles, using evidence, and checking the logical correctness of arguments. Zhang Hao and Wu Xiujuan believe that the main characteristics of deep learning are to focus on critical understanding, emphasize information integration, promote knowledge construction, focus on migration and application, and solve problems. Guo Hua believes that the main characteristics of deep learning include four aspects: association and structure, activity and experience, essence and variant, migration and application. Compared with earlier studies, researchers are no longer limited to analyzing deep learning through comparison with shallow learning, and have begun to explore the basic characteristics of deep learning, especially in the classroom, with special attention to students' active and deep participation.
The second is to emphasize the rich goals and outcomes of deep learning. Some studies emphasize that the results of deep learning point to the transfer of students' deep understanding, such as Bransdorf and others believe that deep learning refers to the teacher's long-term memory by allowing students to deeply understand the course content, on the basis of which students can solve new problems in different situations. But more research emphasizes that deep learning requires students to achieve a range of abilities and goals. The Alliance for Excellent Education emphasizes that deep learning links standardized testing to the ability to communicate, collaborate, and learn on its own. Zhang Kangli believes that through deep learning, students gain the ability to perceive the value of the course, the ability to think critically, the ability to solve complex problems, the ability to collaborate and communicate, the ability to learn to learn, and the ability to apply. It follows that deep learning in the classroom should be directed towards multidimensional goals and multiple outcomes – students must not only transfer and apply knowledge, but also achieve the development of abilities and positive emotional experiences.
The third is to shift from the in-depth "learning" of students to the study of "teaching" with depth of teachers. Many researchers have gradually realized that deep learning is inseparable from the in-depth "teaching" of teachers. Miris believes that in order to achieve deep learning for students, teachers should clarify the focus of teaching content, design activities that can promote students' deep understanding and participation, and give students high-quality feedback and assignments. An Fuhai stressed that the realization of deep learning requires teachers to establish teaching goals for the development of advanced thinking, integrate the learning content of meaning connection, create real scenarios to promote deep learning, and choose evaluation methods that continue to pay attention to for active guidance. Guo Hua believes that the prerequisite for the occurrence of deep learning is the conscious guidance of teachers, teachers should carefully design structured teaching materials with teaching intentions and teaching processes that can achieve teaching purposes in an orderly manner, create an interactive atmosphere of equality, relaxation, cooperation and safety, and make timely adjustments to teaching activities based on feedback information.
Deep learning research provides new ideas for the reform practice of classroom teaching in China. At the end of 2013, the Textbook Development Center of the Basic Education Curriculum of the Ministry of Education planned and organized the development of the "Deep Learning" teaching improvement project to try to solve the problems faced in the current school classroom and to extract the teaching theory and practical experience with local Chinese characteristics. Researchers are paying more and more attention to the "application" of deep learning in school education, and how to achieve deep learning and promote the all-round development of students through teachers' classroom teaching is a focus of current attention in the field of education research in China.
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Teachers' misunderstandings about deep learning in the classroom and why
Classroom deep learning is the process in which students in the classroom, under the guidance of teachers, realize the improvement of cognitive structure, the development of practical ability and complex emotional experience through the understanding and creation of knowledge. Classroom deep learning exists in the specific situation of the classroom, especially paying attention to the richness of students' learning results, the integrity of the learning links and the guidance of the learning process, if the teacher is not accurate, it is easy to fall into the wrong area.
Heavy "difficult" and light "gain": a single knowledge goal masks the multi-dimensional learning results of deep learning in the classroom
Some teachers believe that the more difficult the teaching content, the more they can achieve deep learning in the classroom of students, with "difficult" as "deep". In fact, teachers one-sidedly increase the difficulty, on the one hand, directly affect the students' deep understanding of knowledge - when teachers pursue the difficulty of knowledge too much, in a limited time may present a large number of fragments, lack of context and clear structure of knowledge, it is easy to violate the students' cognitive laws, resulting in students to understand the "difficulty"; on the other hand, it affects the psychological development of students, the difficulty of learning content is easy to make students have a "sense of frustration", directly affecting students' learning interest and self-confidence, and even self-awareness. It is difficult for students to develop authentically. Therefore, when teachers blindly pursue the difficulty of knowledge and replace the depth of students' learning with the difficulty of knowledge, the actual gain of students in the classroom is very limited, and may even have a negative impact on subsequent learning because of "frustration".
In the final analysis, the emphasis on "difficulty" and the light on "gain" stem from the fact that teachers only pay attention to whether students can master the corresponding knowledge through classroom learning. However, what teachers attach importance to is often narrowed into symbolic factual knowledge and conceptual knowledge, and the teacher's intrinsic relationship between knowledge, structural embodiment, and insufficient excavation of methods, ideas and values carried by teachers, so that the knowledge learned by students may be crude and fragmentary. Correspondingly, teachers believe that students learn "well" means that students will do problems and get good results in the corresponding test evaluations. Therefore, the teaching goal under the tendency of "difficult" and "gain" is to pursue students' mastery of fragmented, narrow, and symbolic knowledge.
In fact, deep learning in the classroom emphasizes multi-dimensional learning outcomes. Researchers are increasingly recognizing that deep learning requires learners to achieve a range of literacy and multidimensional goals. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation believes that for students to be competent for 21st century work and civic life, they need to develop six major abilities through deep learning: mastering core academic content, critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills, effective communication skills, cooperative skills, understanding how to learn, and academic thinking patterns. According to the National Research Council Panel, deep learning is about cultivating "literacy in the 21st century," which includes "cognitive domains, that is, mastery of academic content, solving complex problems; personal areas, that is, understanding how to learn and academic thinking tendencies, such as learning motivation, learning engagement, self-efficacy, etc.; and interpersonal interaction areas, such as cooperation and communication skills." In short, deep learning is a learning method that cultivates a variety of learners, rather than a single literacy. As a way to promote student growth, classroom deep learning is a development process that unfolds "from the three dimensions of students' behavior, emotions and cognition", and the results include three aspects.
First, the improvement of students' cognitive structure. Through classroom deep learning, students transcend the limitations of individual experience, gain basic knowledge and understanding of things, understand their internal laws and processes, and form a knowledge structure with clarity, stability, generalization, inclusiveness, coherence and discernability. This means that what students gain through classroom deep learning is systematic and interrelated knowledge, rather than fragmented and fragmented knowledge; "warm" knowledge that can be associated with life, not "cold" knowledge that is absolutely objective and abstract; knowledge that carries thinking and methods such as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, classification and comparison, rather than conceptual knowledge that only involves facts and concepts.
Second, the development of students' practical ability. The ultimate goal of classroom learning is to help students get out of school and better move toward practice. In classroom deep learning, students learn about the methods and corresponding norms of practice through cooperative inquiry and operational experience. Classroom deep learning especially emphasizes the transfer and application of students based on the understanding of knowledge, reasonable transfer and application, especially in specific problem scenarios, can use existing knowledge and skills to solve practical problems, the essence of which is also a process of students' practical ability development. Therefore, through classroom deep learning, students not only learn the methods and norms of practice, but also experience the process of practice and form the thinking mode and behavior mode of practice in knowledge transfer and application.
Third, students experience complex emotions. Classroom deep learning must pay attention to students' emotional experience, value guidance and meaning pursuit, and care about students' spiritual world, meaning world and life growth. Through learning in the classroom, students know themselves, understand others and society, understand the meaning of life and form certain values. For example, students experience deep maternal love in the language class "Remembrance of Autumn", form a sense of national pride in learning the long history and cultural splendor of our country in the history class, learn "develop socialist democratic politics" in the ideological and political class, and establish a correct political viewpoint by clarifying the characteristics and advantages of China's socialist political system. Classroom deep learning helps students break through the narrowness of individual experience, the limitations of time and space, better stimulate students' perception, passion and spirituality of life, and form the core values advocated by the state.
Heavy "high" light "low": the complete process of replacing deep learning in the classroom with part of the learning link
Deep learning is proposed relative to shallow learning that only emphasizes mechanical memory, simple extraction and shallow understanding, focusing on the development of students' "higher-order thinking skills". Higher-order thinking is mental activity or higher-level cognitive ability that occurs at a higher level of cognition, and it manifests itself in the classification of teaching objectives as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creation. In teaching practice, some teachers' understanding of classroom deep learning and high-order thinking is too one-sided, so that the emphasis on "high-order thinking" is light on "low-order thinking": some classes only focus on the "elevation" of knowledge and ignore students' learning of basic concepts and principles; some classrooms emphasize "migration" too much, while ignoring students' "understanding" of the text itself.
Although deep learning is proposed for shallow learning, if the teacher completely separates the two, but only one-sidedly emphasizes high-order thinking and ignores the students' memory and understanding of knowledge, the result will be: on the one hand, students do not fully understand the content of what they have learned, the foundation is not solid, and "low-order thinking" has not been developed accordingly; on the other hand, students' high-order thinking has lost its "foundation" and becomes a sourceless water and a wood without roots, and it is difficult to achieve true development.
The phenomenon of heavy "high" and light "low" stems from the fact that teachers replace the entire occurrence mechanism with part of the deep learning in the classroom. Although in the early days of research, deep learning was based on the drawbacks of shallow learning, this does not mean that deep learning and shallow learning are completely "opposite" and "separate". Classroom deep learning should not only pay attention to students' understanding and memory of knowledge, but also pay attention to students' relatively complex high-order thinking activities such as the application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of knowledge, which means that students' low-order thinking activities and high-order thinking activities should be valued, because "deep learning does not exclude shallow learning, and shallow learning is a separate continuum." Deep learning requires shallow learning to provide the corresponding foundation, and shallow learning is inseparable from the deepening and expansion of deep learning. Therefore, teachers should carefully design and organize classroom teaching to ensure that students have complete thinking activities, and must not replace the whole with parts. In a nutshell, the process of deep learning in the classroom consists of four parts.
The first is activation, that is, based on the grasp of the "learning situation", the teacher finds the "flash point" that triggers the students' enthusiasm for learning, stimulates the students' learning motivation, and enters the "warm-up" state. The key to "activation" is to identify students' learning needs and points of interest, and to promote students' continuous, purpose-oriented learning. Although this stage is relatively short, it will play an important role in controlling execution, directly affecting the student's subsequent learning status and continuous attention.
The second is connection, that is, students gradually establish an intrinsic relationship between existing knowledge experience and new knowledge in the process of in-depth cognitive processing. On the one hand, to strengthen the logical relationship between new and old knowledge, students should be able to sort out the overall and partial relationship between the entire subject knowledge system and new knowledge, and the "before and after order" and "left and right parallel" relationship between new knowledge and old knowledge; on the other hand, promote the relationship between new knowledge and students' existing experience, and use new knowledge to better "explain" existing experience, which will help students better understand.
The third is evaluation, that is, students judge and analyze their own knowledge structure and cognitive processes after "connection". Among them, the evaluation of the relationship between new and old knowledge determines two ways of forming a new knowledge structure: when the new and old knowledge is consistent, the student's original knowledge structure remains unchanged, and the total amount of knowledge is expanded and enriched; when there is a certain conflict between the new and old knowledge, the student's original knowledge structure will be adjusted and rebuilt. In addition, students evaluate self-cognitive processes, adjust learning strategies in a timely manner, form disciplinary thinking methods, and experience positive emotions.
The fourth is migration, that is, students accurately extract and comprehensively apply the knowledge they have learned, which can be divided into two types: vertical migration, that is, students use the new knowledge they have learned as a knowledge base to learn more complex knowledge to achieve the expansion and improvement of the original knowledge structure; horizontal transfer, that is, students apply the new knowledge they have learned to similar problem situations, make the knowledge they have learned manifest in the process of solving problems, and realize the development of students' practical ability. Migration can not only promote the improvement of students' knowledge structure, but also promote the improvement of students' comprehensive practical ability.
It can be seen that teachers with a tendency to emphasize "high" and light "low" tend to pay more attention to "evaluation" or "migration", ignoring "activation" and "connection". However, there is no particularly obvious boundary between classroom deep learning and even all aspects of learning, if teachers only pay attention to "evaluation" or "migration", the essence is to lose the basis of high-level thinking activities, and classroom deep learning will be as difficult to achieve as "castles in the air".
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Emphasis on "learning" over "teaching": The students' own learning obscures the full guidance of teachers in the classroom
Classroom deep learning emphasizes students' participation, initiative, and creativity in learning. But in practice, some teachers equate classroom deep learning simply with students learning on their own, and teachers almost completely let go. Students who appear to be "deeply engaged" in the classroom are actually caught up in formal, superficial, and simple repetitive learning due to the lack of effective guidance from teachers.
Taking a junior high school number learning problem class as an example, the teacher design is completely discussed by the students themselves and explains all the exercises, but some of the problems are comprehensive and difficult, even if individual students can complete themselves, but because the solution ideas and methods are not clear enough, the teacher lacks corresponding points, so most students are still "dazed and do not know how to solve" such problems. It seems that students "learn independently", if they lose the reasonable and sufficient guidance of teachers, students' cooperation can only be superficial and formal, their thinking activities are low-level and repetitive, and students' learning is inefficient or even ineffective.
The essence of "learning" and "teaching" is to ignore the influence and role of teachers in deep learning in the classroom. In fact, classroom deep learning opposes teachers to regard students as objects, so that students are passively or even forced to carry out mechanical memory and simple extraction of learning, but it is not opposed to the guiding role of teachers in the classroom.
This is because: First, classroom deep learning occurs in the classroom, and the teaching and learning in the classroom are complementary and mutually reinforcing unified relationships, the teacher's teaching is for the student's learning, and the student's learning is carried out under the guidance of the teacher, and the two are not diametrically opposed. If the teacher's leading role in teaching is ignored in order to highlight the main position of student learning, it is actually a crude separation between teaching and learning, and the two are placed in a contradictory position.
Second, classroom deep learning opposes the teacher's domination, control and determination of the entire learning process of the student, but does not oppose the reasonable guidance role of the teacher, because the student's classroom deep learning is inseparable from the teacher's in-depth teaching guidance, without the teacher's in-depth guidance in the classroom, the student's classroom learning can only become self-learning, so the student's in-depth learning and the teacher's full teaching are unified.
Specifically, the teacher's guidance of students' deep learning in the classroom is reflected in two points.
First, the initiation and organization of deep learning in the classroom is caused by the teaching of teachers. Teachers need to determine the specific goals of students' learning, choose appropriate learning content, design and organize appropriate learning activities, stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning, and make timely and effective evaluation and feedback on students' learning. The entire process of classroom teaching is achieved through the careful design and implementation of the teacher.
Second, the actual completion of deep learning in the classroom is inseparable from the guidance of teachers. Whether students can truly participate in learning activities, whether to process, understand, evaluate and apply information, whether to achieve the development of high-order thinking, although the direct decision is the student himself, but in this process, the method guidance, process demonstration, timely reminder, answering questions and evaluation feedback given by teachers play an important guiding role. If the teacher completely "lets go" of this, then deep learning in the classroom will be "ineffective" or "inefficient."
Of course, any guidance from the teacher to the student in the classroom can only really work if it triggers or optimizes the student's learning activities. Therefore, teachers should accurately grasp the status and role in their own classrooms and effectively promote students' classroom deep learning.
Teaching strategies for teachers to promote deep learning in the classroom
Teachers should promote students' classroom deep learning, not only to accurately grasp the connotation of classroom deep learning, but also to carefully design and systematically implement classroom learning objectives, content, activities, and evaluations based on the analysis of students, so as to promote students' continuous deep learning in the classroom.
Vertical and horizontal analysis to determine rich and complex teaching objectives
The results of classroom deep learning should be rich and complex, so teachers should first clarify the rich teaching goals to promote students' deep learning in the classroom, which is based on the "vertical and horizontal" analysis of students.
First, the "longitudinal" analysis takes "past-present-future" as a clue. "Past" points to the students' existing knowledge reserves, because the existing knowledge directly affects the students' subsequent learning, pay attention to the content of the knowledge that students have learned, understand its cognitive structure, in order to better determine the "starting point" of students for classroom deep learning. "Now" points to the student's current life experience. Only by understanding the "real life" of students can teachers build a "bridge" between students' life experience and learning content, and better help students understand, analyze, apply and transfer. "Future" refers to the knowledge, abilities and emotions that students may acquire after learning through a lesson. The key to the teacher's analysis of the "future" is to grasp the intrinsic relationship between the "will have" and the "already" knowledge, experience and ability of the students.
Second, the "horizontal" analysis takes "whole-part-individual" as the clue. On the whole, teachers can grasp the basic characteristics of students in the school from the perspective of regional characteristics and school characteristics; in part, teachers analyze the physical and mental development characteristics of the teaching segments, specific grade students, and the cognitive, practical and emotional characteristics of students in specific classes from the perspective of development and association; individually, teachers should grasp the personality differences of each student based on a full understanding of students. Only based on a comprehensive analysis can teachers determine reasonable classroom teaching goals.
It should be noted that in order to promote students' deep learning in the classroom, the connotation of classroom teaching goals should be rich and diverse rather than poor and single, so teachers must not be partial to the whole, only pay attention to one aspect and ignore the other; at the same time, we must pay attention to the internal relationship between the elements of the teaching goal, and cannot simply list or rigidly "stack" these elements.
Four-dimensional interpretation, mining the multiple values of teaching content
Classroom deep learning is achieved with specific learning content as the carrier. For teachers, in order to promote the all-round development of students through classroom learning, it is necessary to dig deep and multi-dimensional interpretation of teaching content.
First, the interpretation of "background". The content of students' deep learning is not absolutely objective and abstract, but arises in a specific socio-historical context. If the teacher withdraws the "ins and outs" of knowledge and ignores its "background dependence", then "the knowledge created by the predecessors is almost incomprehensible to the future generations", and knowledge can only become a symbol of the student's mechanical memory. The interpretation of the "background" of specific knowledge is conducive to promoting better understanding of students.
Second, the interpretation of "relationships". Any subject knowledge is not isolated and fragmented, but through the "connection" of some core concepts or important principles, a relatively complete structural system is formed. Therefore, teachers should not only pay attention to the basic connotations of these concepts and principles, but also be able to accurately grasp the essential relationship between them.
Third, the interpretation of "method". Knowledge always carries certain thinking and methods, including general thinking methods such as analysis and synthesis, abstraction and generalization, induction and deduction, as well as the logical forms belonging to a specific discipline. Only by interpreting the thinking methods carried by knowledge can teachers help students form certain disciplinary thinking methods and thinking habits, learn from each other, and truly realize the creation and transfer of knowledge.
Fourth, the interpretation of "meaning", only by analyzing and presenting knowledge to students to broaden the meaning between students and themselves, with others, with society, and with nature, teachers can help students obtain positive emotional experience and spiritual strength through classroom deep learning, and then form a correct outlook on life, worldview and values.
Systematic implementation that respects the integrity of deep learning in the classroom
Deep learning in the classroom is inseparable from the careful design and system implementation of teachers. For different aspects of deep learning in the classroom, teachers should have different implementation priorities and strategies.
First, create situations that trigger cognitive conflicts among students. To stimulate students' intrinsic motivation to learn, teachers must be good at creating meaningful problem situations that are closely related to students' previous concepts and existing experiences in learning the content, but also clearly point to specific learning purposes and reflect the nature of the discipline of the content learned; and can stimulate all students' active participation and interest in continuous thinking.
Second, timely "bridge-building" helps students establish an intrinsic relationship between knowledge and life experience, knowledge and knowledge. Teachers should be good at discovering the correlation and fit between new knowledge and students' life experience, helping students to use their existing experience to support the learning of new knowledge; they should also guide students to extract the existing knowledge related to it in "recall" and form a correlation.
Third, set up "comparisons" to help students form corresponding knowledge structures. Teachers can help students learn to "compare" by asking questions, guide students to distinguish between new and old knowledge, different concepts and principles, and analyze the relationship between knowledge and experience to discover the differences and connections between knowledge.
Fourth, set up another situation to help students migrate. The situation creation of this link is not to stimulate students' motivation to learn, but to help students use the knowledge they have learned, think and understand the situation with a critical attitude, reason and solve problems with evidence, and form students' own exploratory insights and even questions while realizing knowledge transfer and effective use.
Respecting the integrity of students' classroom deep learning, on the one hand, teachers need to fully grasp the implementation of each link of classroom deep learning, especially to avoid replacing "whole" with "part", it should be emphasized that we must not pay one-sided attention to students' transfer and application of knowledge, otherwise students' learning may become a "mirage" because of lack of foundation and separation from the textbook text, which is still inefficient or even ineffective. On the other hand, teachers must pay attention to the internal relationship between the various links of deep learning in the classroom of students, and must not make a mechanical distinction between the various links of deep learning in the classroom, and in the implementation of teaching, according to the actual situation of students and the characteristics of the learning content, according to the surface and inside, from shallow to deep, from easy to difficult gradually promoted and flexible handling.
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Timely evaluation to promote the continuous promotion of students' deep learning in the classroom
Evaluation is of great significance to the promotion of deep learning in the classroom, teachers can "build ladders" for students through evaluation, guide students to deeply analyze and think about learning content, timely adjust learning methods and strategies, and promote the continuous promotion of deep learning in students' classrooms.
On the one hand, teachers should evaluate students' classroom learning in a timely, comprehensive and accurate manner. First of all, teachers should pay attention to the whole process of students' classroom learning, and pay attention to students' performance in every activity and every interaction, so that they can make corresponding analysis and judgment in a timely manner. Secondly, teachers should be comprehensive in their evaluation of students' classroom learning, not only paying attention to the results of learning, but also paying attention to students' choice of learning resources, the use of learning methods, the arrangement of learning time, and the degree of effort. Focus not only on the entire class, but also on the individual differences in student learning. Third, teachers should be accurate in evaluating students' classroom learning, not only by stereotypes or superficial phenomena, but by digging into the root causes behind the phenomenon and accurately finding essential problems.
On the other hand, teachers should take appropriate and effective ways to feedback the evaluation results to students. Only when the teacher's evaluation is timely feedback to the students and is accepted by the students, can the evaluation play a real guiding and promoting role. In this process, teachers should not only "point out" the problem, and not "hide" because of taking care of students' self-esteem; nor should they be too straightforward because they are eager to remind. Teachers should take an appropriate approach, concisely and clearly feedback the evaluation results to students, so that students are willing to accept and agree with the evaluation results, but also clarify the direction of improvement, and then continuously adjust themselves to truly realize the continuous promotion of deep learning in the classroom.