Effective strategies for deeper learning and approaches to organising learning

Olatomilade Folaranmi, Lead Instructional Coach and Research Champion, Trinity Academy Leeds, UK What is deeper learning? In a psychologically safe environment underpinned by the culture of high challenge and low threat, guiding the students in our care towards expertise becomes the priority and a non-negotiable. John Sweller, in the abstract of his 1988 paper titled ‘Cognitive load during problem solving’, writes, ‘Considerable evidence indicates that domain-specific knowledge in the form of schemas is the primary factor distinguishing experts from novices.’ (Sweller, 1988, p. 257)  Deeper learning – sometimes referred to as deep learning – leads to robust and flexible schemas that foster expertise, enabling the detection and understanding of the complex elements to learning. Professor Mehta of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education defined deeper learning as ‘the understanding of not just the surface features of a subject or discipline, but the underlying struct