Deep Learning: Engage the World Change the World

by Michael Fullan

it changes learning by focusing on personally and collectively meaningful matters, and by delving into them in a way that alters forever the roles of students, teachers, families, and others.

We saw above from the RAND research that even privileged schools, when they get the opportunity, do not go very deeply in changing practice.

It is the case that good technology can accelerate good learning.

We have learned that many of the best ideas come from leading practitioners, not from research per se.

The old system works for only a minority, and those who succeed, with better marks for example, are not all that well off either when it comes to living in increasingly complex times.

The circumstances that now face us represent a unique configuration of challenges that make it essential that we proactively change the world through learning.

“who acts upon and transforms the world, and in so doing moves toward ever new possibilities of a fuller and richer life individually and collectively”

Deep learning then is about finding our place in a complex, indeed scary world.

It is about transforming our reality through learning, both individually and with others.

Wise policy makers will leverage and further stimulate promising deep learning developments because they come to see the necessity and desirability of having citizens who are steeped in the global competencies.

We show that the status quo is fundamentally losing ground,

Having said that, we worry that the movement of deep learning is fragile and may become domesticated by strong forces in the status quo, or become weakened because the work becomes too complex and hard.

So keep in mind that the outcome could go either way: exciting learning that is part and parcel of transforming learners and the world they inhabit, or yet another uneventful chapter in the lives of teachers and their students.

We think so, and this book is about how the world of learning might turn out in profoundly better ways than the present.

Edgar Schein

Deep learning represents a change in culture; it is not a change in program.

We would be the first to say that the barriers are enormous: bad policies, wrong testing regimes, growing inequity that those in power try to preserve and indeed increase, inadequate and uneven investment in public education, and the complexity of proving that new deep learning is on the right track and will produce outcomes in a reasonably short time period.

What we don’t know is where this is heading.

We can say with confidence that the current education system doesn’t work and one way or the other will transform or disappear over the next two decades.

Increasingly, students will not tolerate boring or alienating schooling. And the dynamics of a digitally laced global world will force rad...

Engage the World Change the World

“What makes it deep?”

and examine the new measures needed to assess and communicate progress in deep learning.

Deep learning is valuable learning that sticks

Engage the world change the world is fundamentally a learning proposition.

“transformation of learning for all students”

that deep learning is good for all, but it is especially powerful for those most alienated from the traditional schooling system.

Deep learning, as we portray it, is capable of bringing together excellence and equity for all,

many of those who are participating are often in it for

the grades, not out of interest.

“act...

All this is not so much a criticism as it is a confirmation that schooling as it was set up 150 years ago is no longer suited for the present times.

Another push factor making schooling seem less relevant is that the future job market is not only unpredictable but also in decline as the rise of robots takes its toll on the number of jobs that will be available.

do—the current generation has a hard time imagining the pathway to a desirable future.

hopelessness,

they find little sense of belonging in an institution that seems both irrelevant and uncaring.

There is no reason for the majority of students to take conventional schooling

seriously.

many roadside attractions and other diversions that provide an alternative draw for students: drugs, the...

freedom from versus freedom to

Humans work hard to get away from something that is oppressive whether it be constraints or boredom. But they are less good at deciding what to do with any newfound freedom.

psychoanalyst, argued that humans find pure freedom uncomfortable and lonely,

Apparently, advancing to realization is not so easy.

the tendency in a vacuum is to stay isolated and deteriorate or to join the wrong group.

I probably tend to be isolated vs joining a group - right or wrong one.

these conditions it takes an especially powerful pull to draw people to worthwhile endeavors. Shortly, we make the case t...

There is no reason for the majority of students to take conventional schooling seriously.

Even 8-year-olds and younger feel the anxiety on a daily basis.

Our book is meant to help those who are willing to undertake the journey into a promising, but in many ways unknown territory.

being a good learner is the ultimate freedom.

solution. That solution, ready to be made, is deep learning.