Teachers’ potential to promote students’ deeper learning in whole-class teaching: An observation study in Norwegian classrooms

Abstract

Teachers worldwide are challenged to adjust their teaching to meet students’ needs for deeper learning. The lack of mutual understanding among researchers, policymakers and teachers tends to blur the discussion on how to enhance deeper learning through teaching, which further challenges teachers in making changes in their classroom practices. This qualitative observation study aims to explore how five skilled and experienced Norwegian teachers facilitate 10–16-year-old students’ potential deeper learning in whole-class teaching. The teachers are videotaped four times during a school year, and observations show how teachers enhance or undermine students’ active involvement, facilitate or hinder positive learning environments, support or impede deeper understanding, and stimulate or inhibit metacognitive reflection. The observations are discussed within a framework of the literature and research on how deeper learning is understood and promoted. The findings indicate how teachers’ facilitation of a supportive learning environment is essential to actively involve students in the classroom interactions and dialogue needed to promote deeper content understanding and metacognitive reflection. We explore the potential for deeper learning within whole-class teaching and argue that such potential arises when teachers facilitate collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful classroom interactions. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the importance of employing varied teaching practices to further address students’ need for deeper learning. The study presents examples of whole-class teaching practices framed by theory and the earlier research on deeper learning, which may contribute to the concretization of policy changes in support of deeper learning in education.

Perceived Teacher Autonomy Support and Students' Deep Learning: The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy and the Moderating Role of Perceived Peer Support

“…In the context of teachers' autonomy support, students take the initiative to discover, explore and solve problems utilizing autonomy inquiry and peer cooperative learning. In the whole learning process, students' learning style is improved (Sølvik and Glenna, 2021 ).…”

“…Lastly, autonomy teaching contextual will be carried in the future practical teaching, therefore, the current research contributes to cultivate student self-awareness and initiative, and help students better acquire and transform knowledge, better transfer and use knowledge, cultivate higher-order thinking ability, and lay the foundation for training innovative talents (Sølvik and Glenna, 2021 ; Zhang and Yang, 2021 ).…”

“…Therefore, the learning style of students is very crucial in the evaluation of teaching quality. More and more scholars are paying attention to let students learn from shallow learning to deep learning (Sølvik and Glenna, 2021 ). The concept of deep learning was first proposed by Marton and Saljo, who divided it into deep and shallow learning intentions and strategies according to students' reading methods (Marton and Säljö, 1976 ).…”

Deeper Learning in Leadership to Help High School Students Find Potential

“…Deeper learning in leadership to help high school students discover potential, referring to various theories of building leadership potential. This topic can be found in Sølvik & Glenna (2022) that teachers around the world are challenged to adapt their teaching to meet students' needs for deeper learning. Zhang et al, (2021) suggest a deep learning model for innovative evaluation of ideological and political learning.…”

The relationship between teacher's gender and deep learning strategy: The mediating role of deep learning motivation

“…Deep learning emphasizes that learning motivation points to meaning comprehension (Marton & Säljö, 1976), active engagement in learning and high‐level participation in cognitive strategies (Biggs, 1987c). At present, most of the deep learning research in education focuses on the application of technology in learning, student learning, and teacher teaching (Jamil & Bhuiyan, 2021; Sølvik & Glenna, 2021; Sugden et al, 2021). However, the research on teacher's deep learning motivation and deep learning strategy needs further exploration.…”