This book was written for all those teachers who suggested we offer more practical guidance in taking the first steps toward putting pluriliteracies teaching for deeper learning (PTDL) into practice in their subject classrooms. This is a big ask: PTDL as a pedagogic approach to deeper learning is complex and demanding because it challenges practitioners to rethink their role as subject teachers in several ways. Primarily, PTDL asks practitioners to revisit their understanding of subject teaching and learning and how it might contribute to the development of transferable knowledge and lifelong learning skills. This requires not only an in-depth understanding of deeper learning and disciplinary literacies and what they mean for the subjects they teach but also the knowledge and skills to put that understanding into practice. Classroom learning using PTDL principles is about joining the dots – making transparent the necessary connections needed to construct deeper learning episodes. This requires aligning disciplinary core constructs, the mechanics and drivers of deeper learning, in order for teachers to design trajectories for pluriliteracies development within their subjects/fields of expertise.
Therefore, we reached out to invite subject specialists not only to delineate the relevance of those concepts within their disciplines and subjects but to design sample deeper learning episodes in order to illustrate the process of alignment for their specific subject. In addition, we asked them to reflect on key principles and ideas of PTDL to make the thinking behind their planning visible, hoping that this might offer additional insights for interested educators.
Teresa Connolly argues that a profound understanding of key chemistry concepts and processes is as fundamental to scientific literacy as mastering complex procedures and skills, such as performing experiments, interpreting data or communicating one’s findings using specific text types. However, she points out that such an understanding of chemical concepts is inhibited not only by learners’ poor command of academic language but also by the fact that chemical processes can be observed at different levels of abstraction. This poses a specific challenge in chemistry because learners often report having difficulties distinguishing clearly between processes at the sub-microscopic, the microscopic and the macroscopic levels, which will lead to misconceptions and prevent deeper understanding. To address that issue, Connolly’s deeper learning episode on redox reactions offers engaging ways of promoting scientific reasoning through a series of student-led experiments and inquiries. Systematic guidance in academic language use will enable learners to express their findings and observations precisely and adequately and thus help them distinguish the processes occurring at various levels of abstraction with increasing ease and confidence.
The physics chapter by Klaus Wendt, Andreas Pysik and Johannes Lothzky aims at promoting deeper understanding of the complex phenomenon of the rainbow and encourages learners to demonstrate and share their understanding through an article for a Wikipedia page. In this deeper learning episode, learners carry out a number of experiments on spectral colours and colour sequences. They organise the information gathered and explain the physics concepts and processes underlying the phenomenon. The authors use innovative ways of scaffolding academic language development to increase the meaning-making potential of younger learners.
Nicole Berg’s deeper learning episode aims at improving learners’ ability to orally explain geography. To do that, learners will listen to podcasts on global heating to analyse expert explanations. In this way, they will learn about the nature and structure of scientific explanations in context. In addition, learners will decode, analyse and practise prosodic features of spoken language (in terms of intonation, stress, pausing and phonological chunking). This will support storage and retrieval of academic language elements from long-term memory. Ultimately, learners will structure and formulate their own oral explanations of subject-specific content. This highly innovative approach to promoting oral language skills uses insights into the mechanics of language acquisition and speech production to facilitate subject learning.
Susanne Staschen-Dielmann’s history episode is designed to offer learners deep understanding and command of a specific historical genre. Criteria-centred evaluation is one of the most challenging text types to master in history. It requires the ability to analyse and evaluate historical events from different perspectives in a nuanced way through a set of criteria. A series of tasks leads to students creating instructional videos for other students. In those videos, students explore aspects of society in the German Empire guided by the research question: ‘After unifying the German Reich with “blood and iron” in 1871, did Bismarck manage to unify German society as a nation?’ After sharing their findings on different social and political factions and analysing similarities and differences according to social, political, economic and ideological positions, learners collaboratively assess the degree of national unity or disunity in Germany under Bismarck following the principles of the criteria-centred evaluation.
For their politics lessons Saskia Helm and Susanne Staschen-Dielmann create a digital learnscape based on the well-known simulation Model United Nations (MUN) – usually based on the organisation of an international conference. The idea of a digital MUN emerged during the first lockdown in Great Britain and was refined using pluriliteracies principles during the second one. Within the authentic setting of a United Nations conference, learners are guided through more and more sophisticated text-production tasks. These include writing a conflict analysis, a draft resolution and an opening speech. Learners take part in a highly formalised debate, which requires the use of a highly elaborate register. The digital learning space is used to ensure formal and informal communication and information exchange within groups of varying sizes as well as providing meaningful feedback.
Frederic Taveau makes a strong argument for reconceptualising modern languages as a subject discipline – in this case French – with knowledge domains and pathways that explore alternative ways of learning and using language with beginner or near-beginner students. By foregrounding textual fluency, he challenges more traditional approaches to language learning that emphasise linguistic systems. Instead, he focuses on the use of multi-modal literary texts to promote meaning-making and language learning through deepening critical and cultural awareness of relevant, motivating real-world phenomena. Taveau outlines the processes involved in enabling novice learners of French to become more self-confident and self-directed creative literary writers using language in unprecedented ways. Through a series of scaffolded text-centred learning episodes, learners are guided through pluriliteracies-based steps, increasingly using cognitive discourse functions creatively and confidently (explaining, describing, classifying, arguing and evaluating) to construct their own descriptive literary texts on a gothic theme. These texts are ‘owned’ by students, demonstrating language learning as a creative, motivating means to understanding their world and that of others.
Stefan Altmeyer and Johannes Kerbeck explore religious education as a means for enabling learners to build life-relevant knowledge and critical understanding. They argue that religious literacies are underpinned by an awareness of interreligious views shifting from the neutral to critical and ultimately leading to positioning individual decisions and identities within religion-aware thinking. Learners are guided along a pathway from understanding ‘religious language’ to actively engaging in religious dialogue using the ‘language of religion’ in appropriate, critical and reflective ways. Investigating the differences between subjective and objective positionality involves learners in facing changing perspectives that build on developing basic religious knowledge, applying their understanding to lived experiences and constructing critical yet relevant evaluations of arguments and counterarguments. When these evaluations demonstrate appropriate use of the ‘correlative’ or ‘dialogic’ principle of religious learning, students exhibit deeper understanding. The learning episode focuses on a national initiative on global development, featuring a video-streamed interreligious panel discussion with experts from different creeds. Drawing on issues of diversity, empathy, solidarity and responsibility, learners were invited to prepare for (using digital media), actively participate in and connect personally with issues through deep reflection informed by religious literacies development.
Conceptualising music education not only as ‘music-making’ but as ‘musical meaning-making’, Valerie Krupp’s learning episode provides a fascinating example of developing learner musical literacy skills – involving intrapersonal and interpersonal negotiation and reflection, drawing on subject-specific knowledge, skills and processes. She argues that for learners to engage meaningfully in music analysis, recensions, aesthetic arguments and so on, they need to practise and use the language of musical genres and musical inquiry alongside language for critical and aesthetic evaluation. This, she proposes, promotes learner agency encompassing musical literacies, competences and critical cultural consciousness. Situating the learning event as praxial, student-relevant and real-world, it concerns the posting of a sea shanty, ‘The Wellerman’, on TikTok. Against all odds, the song ‘went viral,’ leading to ‘in the moment’ global interest in sea shanties. Learners investigate why such a musical phenomenon took place. This opens up critical inquiry into the socio-cultural context of the shanty genre, classifying, analysing and critiquing musical and social media and analysing user comments. This example could be transferred to exploring other musical genres and interpretations.
Susanne Prediger’s and Anna-Katharina Roos’ chapter offers profound insights into the nature of literacy in mathematics. It documents a precise account of the way the knowledge and activity domains of doing, organising, explaining and arguing translate into algebraic activities and procedures. Using the example of transformation and transformation rules, they argue that algebraic rules that are not underpinned with meaning will become arbitrary and lead to typical student errors. They make the case for algebraic reasoning as a way of developing conceptual understanding and promoting deeper learning in the math classroom. Based on their empirical classroom research, the authors propose three principles to inform the design of deeper learning episodes in mathematics: connecting multiple representations and languages, engaging learners in rich discourse practice and employing macro-level scaffolding that integrates mathematics and language learning.
We are very grateful to our colleagues who have shared their insights and explorations in PDTL across disciplines and subject classrooms. We hope that these will contribute to furthering our collective understanding of the conceptual and practical realities, challenges and successes of developing PTDL to enhance the quality of learning experiences anywhere.
