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When Professor Jal Mehta and then-doctoral candidate Sarah Fine embarked on their exploration of deeper learning in American high schools, they were initially disappointed. They’d traveled to California to visit a school known for its rich, engaging instruction — but many of the classrooms they visited were far from inspiring. If deeper learning wasn’t the norm here, they wondered, where was it?
After talking to 350 students, educators, and parents across 30 schools, they found few schools where powerful learning, in which most students were engaged and thinking critically, was happening across the board. However, they did find individual teachers who were making it happen on their own. In those classrooms, students were enthusiastically engaged, participating in challenging tasks that drew on their analytical and problem-solving skills. Mehta and Fine describe these bright spots in their new book, In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School.
Usable Knowledge sat down with Mehta and Fine, who is now the director of the teaching apprenticeship program at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education in San Diego, to find out how other teachers can replicate the successes they uncovered — and how to prepare teachers to facilitate the kind of deeper learning we'd hope to see in every setting.
