Note: This post is part 1 in a two-part series. Today’s post provides a general introduction to the importance of deep learning dispositions not just to the growth of subject-matter competence but to spiritual growth. This is followed by an exploration of how two (of five) dispositions explicitly facilitate spiritual formation when applied. This call to spiritual formation considers both our students but also us as faculty members. Tomorrow’s post will explore the remaining three dispositions along with some concluding thoughts.
Introduction
I have the joy of spending my days helping students more fully and more effectively learn in the classroom and as they work towards mastery of content. The classroom content is not my area of expertise, but hopefully the steps of learning are. As I work to help students progress in their learning effectiveness, there are a number of tools and techniques that I try to utilize to equip students with the skills to learn. Learning itself is a skill. Learning is something that we all do and something that we will hopefully all do throughout our lives.
As I work towards equipping students with the skills to be effective lifelong learners, there are a number of methods that I attempt to encourage students to utilize. Students are often looking for a quick fix. “I have a test tomorrow. How do I study?” There are strategies to try and ideas to consider, but ultimately, my hope is that I am equipping students to be effective learners, not just content experts or high-grade achievers. Learning theorists view this as the difference between surface learning and deep learning.1 Deep learning is moving beyond facts and figures to application. It is moving up Bloom’s taxonomy. It is learning information, but then having it stick2 (. This is the type of learning we are all hoping for in our classrooms and actively working to cultivate through our teaching practices. Authors like James M. Lang (Small teaching)3, Ken Bain (What the best college teachers do)4, and Weinstein et. al (Understanding how we learn)5 push us to consider the steps we might take to help students along in this learning process.
In my work in academic support, I consider how I might help students take some of these deep learning steps on their own outside of classroom. Gaier et. al6 identify five attitudes for deep learning that I am regularly trying to encourage in students as we work towards deeper learning. These attitudes are active engagement, love of learning, willingness to fail, inquisitiveness, and intentional effort. When put into practice over a period of time, research supports the success of these attitudes in enhancing student learning7). At moments, students are disappointed that these are not magic tools that guarantee a higher test score, but when fully embraced these attitudes are effective steps for helping students to learn more deeply.
As I have considered these concepts and explained them to students, I have been struck by their importance in my own life, not just as a lifelong learner and not just as an educator but as a faithful follower of Jesus.
I am thankful to work in a place where I get to integrate my faith and my work, a place where conversations about faith are a regular part of how I spend my time. However, I am not just thinking about the spiritual formation of 18–22-year-olds, I am mindful of my own relationship with Jesus. How am I growing and changing? How do I know God more fully at the end of this academic year than at the start? What does it look like for me to deepen my faith? As I consider these attitudes of deep learning, I see a shared path towards my own spiritual formation– not just towards knowing about Jesus but towards knowing Jesus.
Deep Learning Dispositions: Attitudes for Learning and for Spiritual Formation.
Active Engagement – In the classroom or studying in the library, active engagement involves being a participant in the process of learning. We can all picture the student asleep in the back of the classroom or the student more engaged in their text conversation than in classroom activities. Their level of learning is not nearly that of a student whose eyes are up and whose mind is engaged. Zakrajsek8 simply calls this idea “Attention.” The world is full of stimuli and “attention is the process of attending to these stimuli” (p. 76). In the classroom, this might simply look like taking notes or actually listening to a lecture rather than daydreaming about what the Dinning Commons might have for lunch. In studying, attention means moving beyond rereading a textbook or my notes, the most common and the most ineffective methods of studying9; to practicing recall and forcing our minds to actually engage in the process of learning.
The Holy Spirit is a critical part of my spiritual formation, yet I am not a passive vessel in my own faith formation. If I am living in a distracted world where every stimuli other than God has my attention, my relational growth with my heavenly father is stunted. Scriptures call us into active participation in our growth. If I truly want to know God more, I need to move beyond passively going through the motions of Christian living. Reading God’s word is extremely important, but reading His word each day without active engagement will not lead to learning or deeper relationship with God. One simple method for this in my life has been utilizing the methods championed by the Center for Scripture Engagement at Taylor University.10 Methods like handwriting the scriptures, picturing the scene, and praying the scriptures move me beyond passive rereading of passages of the Bible and into a deeper understanding of God’s word and of God.
My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words. (Proverbs 4:20 [NIV])
Love of Learning – Deeply connected to intrinsic motivation11 love of learning refers to our ability to turn not just our attention but also our affection towards what it is that we are learning. Zakrajsek12 refers to this as “value”. I wish that my feelings towards a subject area did not impact the outcome of my learning, but we know that the student who says, “I hate math” or “This gen. ed. course is the worst” is far less likely to learn the necessary content of the course. They have pre-decided they don’t need to know it and have significantly dropped their motivation before even attempting to learn. When teaching a love of learning I work to help students see what it is that they might actually enjoy about the content area or topic or maybe something they appreciate about the professor. Or, perhaps it is that they stay focused on what it is that they love about God who created what they are studying. There is always something we can find that we love.
When we love something, our affection is set towards it, and it remains on our mind. This regular and continual engagement is an important part of the learning process. When I love something, when it is always on my mind, the depth of relationship with the subject or person grows in exponential ways. Think of students smitten with someone across your campus. The object of their affection is always on their mind.
In the same ways, how have I set my affection on God and who He is in my life? Where can I practice not just a love of learning, but love of God? When His goodness is on my mind in my comings and my goings, night and day, my relationship with Him changes. I am working to set my mind and my heart—to set my affection—on the things of God and on God himself.
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)
Footnotes
- Scott E. Gaier, Jenna Kramer, and John M. Braxton. “Helping students to become effective learners: Early evidence on embedding learning skills instruction in content coursework.” Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal 15, no. 4 (2022), https://doi.org/10.26209/td2022vol15iss11735; Todd Zakrajsek The New Science of Learning : How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain. Third edition. (Sterling, Virginia: Stylus, 2022).
- Peter C Brown, Henry L Roediger III, and Mark A McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).
- Lang, James M. 2021. Small Teaching : Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. Second edition. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley brand.
- Ken. 2004. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Weinstein, Y., Megan Sumeracki, and Oliver Caviglioli. 2013. Understanding How We Learn. Routledge.
- Gaier et. al, ” Helping students to become effective learners.”
- Gaier et. al, ” Helping students to become effective learners.”
- Zakrajsek, New Science of Learning
- Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, Make it stick, Aimee A Callende and Mark A. McDaniel. “The Limited Benefits of Rereading Educational Texts.” Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34, no. 1 (2009): 30–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2008.07.001; Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Andrew C Butler, and Henry L Roediger. “Metacognitive Strategies in Student Learning: Do Students Practise Retrieval When They Study on Their Own?” Memory (Hove, England), 17, no. 4 (2009): 471–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210802647009.
- https://www.taylor.edu/about/offices/centers/scripture-engagement/.
- Gaier et. al, “Helping students to become effective learners.”
- Zakrajsek, New Science of Learning
