In Search of Deeper Learning

The Quest to Remake the American High School

De: Jal Mehta, Sarah Fine

Narrado por: Adam Lofbomm

What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms - places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn.

The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at 30 different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity.

The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education - one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.

©2019 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2019 Tantor

Not for everyone BUT every educator would benefit from reading

Looking at prevous reviews, I agree that this book is not for everyone, in that it is so detailed and meticulous. However I found it to be highly interesting and informative, as a teacher myself. I think anyone in education would benefit from reading ESPECIALLY school and district leaders.

Some great ideas but fluffy methodology & language

This book has introduced yet another term to education lexicon - deeper learning. It appears to be a cousin of experiential or project-based learning in some sense, but in an effort to brand their book, the authors have added another term to the vocabulary.

If we put that aside, the book does have some good writing to describe research and frameworks that one can use to distinguish between good and bad learning.

But, ultimately, the book is not incredibly rigorous.. They observed a few schools in very particular places and have now extrapolated that to the education system broadly. It is less research and evidence-driven than anecdote-driven citing examples of what to do based on single teachers or schools.

Given it was published in 2019 by Harvard professors, the book is also a bit too clearly political or ideologically-driven and dare I say 'woke'. I suspect if published today, it would read very differently but the constant Black and LatinX conversation was a distraction from the discussion of high schools that we need.

And finally, I was hopeful the authors would give a bit of guidance on what to look for or do (or even what not to do) in our schools, but they fail to do this. They highlight interesting individual practices and anecdotes but stop short of prescribing or offering a unified theory of deeper learning.

I'd personally find a couple of podcasts the authors were on and listen to those. You'll get the fundamental points of the book without the investment of time.

Great book on progressive education

Contrary to other early reviewers, this book is phenomenal. Yes it reads like a dissertation and is not far off, but that should not be off putting for someone looking at a competitive work on highly touted progressive models of education. And the book is forthright with its scope of study. With basic understanding of the models presented it is fairly clear where and what these schools actually are. This is not a political text by any means, nor is it intended to be an exhaustive look at educational models. It presents very impactful models and shows a fairly unbiased comparison of each, highlighting both the positives and negatives.
This is a great piece of research. I have never left a review but was so incredibly disappointed by the previous reviewers perspective I couldn’t imagine those being representative of such a work.
Is this book for everyone? No. Is it for someone looking at a research based perspective on alternative progressive models for education? Absolutely!

Fine Until Political

The book is highly enlightening, however it does play a lot of politics that goes too far towards the end of the book (DEI mentioning is fine, but decides to go significantly further by commenting on US culture with extreme political bias with more recent elections).

Awesome until the Appendix

The book was well written and presented with confidence. It seemed to be objective and presented many perspectives. Then, the author brings politics into it. After that, the author reveals that all the schools observed were in big cities and in only "blue" states. If no schools in rural or "red" states were observed, how can the book be even close to objective. I'm an independent from a small southwest town. The Appendix ruined the book and invalidated the lessons presented.

Like Reading A Dissertation.

This had a lot of good points, but it was clearly written in a more academic style and seemed to be jumping through all the hoops that a thesis or dissertation has to jump thorough. It made it very dry to read and there didn't seem to be any real meat to help teachers.