In Beyond CLIL: Pluriliteracies Teaching for Deeper Learning we demonstrate that learning progressions typically evolve around big ideas in a discipline or a subject. Disciplinary core constructs show how disciplines or subjects use different approaches to collecting, analysing, evaluating and communicating information. This is why, in PTDL, those core constructs are used to inform and guide the development of learning progressions into/for individual subjects. Progress in subject learning is not linear but multi-dimensional and multi-directional. It involves specific ways of thinking and typical forms of representing information and specific text types or genres to share information. Progress in subject learning can be conceptualised as enhancing meaning-making potential. It entails growing conceptual understanding of content knowledge as well as a growing command of subject-specific procedures and strategies. It results from engaging in the specific major activity domains of a subject (doing, organising, explaining and arguing). This idea is captured in Figure 3.1.

We have coined the term deeper learning episode (DLE) to emphasise the idea that PTDL’s overriding objective is to offer opportunities for deeper learning through a focus on subject-specific literacies. Also, we felt the need to introduce a new term that is not limited to specific timetabled lessons. A DLE extends over a series of lessons, depending not only on the intentions, purposes and outcomes of learning but, more importantly, on whether or not those intentions, purposes and outcomes translate into deeper learning. A DLE organically flows into the next one when learners can demonstrate deep understanding of the specific content or sufficient mastery of the targeted skills. Otherwise, it is time for us teachers to go back to the drawing board to design and offer more opportunities for learners to understand and practise. Each DLE consists of a number of interconnected phases where teachers and learners jointly engage in complimentary activities to incite and sustain deeper learning processes (see Figure 4.1).

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 criteria-centred evaluation.

For knowledge to become transferable, it needs to be stored in long-term memory in such a way that learners can successfully retrieve it. However, ‘merely’ committing information to long-term memory does not equal deeper learning. Teaching that focuses mostly on facts and does not provide learners with ample opportunities to use and apply their knowledge will lead to so-called inert knowledge, which cannot be accessed to solve problems. To really understand content, our learners need to establish connections between new information and prior knowledge, relate new information to larger contexts and understand its relevance inside and outside the classroom.

For their politics lessons Susanne Staschen-Dielmann and Saskia Helm 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 policy cycle analysis, a draft resolution and an opening speech. Learners take part in a highly formalised debate, which requires the use of an extremely 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.

The pedagogic considerations and practical ideas presented in this volume offer, we believe, a compelling rationale for exploring the potential of deeper learning across a wide range of subjects through an explicit focus on subject literacies that:

• Promote the prioritisation of deeper understanding of subject-specific concepts alongside subject-specific ways of constructing and communicating that understanding.

• Illustrate how a continuous focus on meaning-making and languaging of understanding will not only support and facilitate conceptual understanding of subject content but will also render learning more transparent by making subject-specific thinking and processing visible and thus more accessible and easier to grasp for learners.

• Emphasise that using more than one language in subject lessons to highlight subject-specific ways of meaning-making across languages can be a powerful learning catalyst. This is because a focus on PLURI-literacies will create synergies that will increase our learners’ meaning-making potential by empowering them to successfully communicate across subjects and languages, purposefully using a wide variety of genres, modes and styles.

• Show that the concept of deeper learning episodes (DLEs) is compatible with a wide range of subjects. At the same time, the experts report that our suggested template for designing such episodes, along with the guiding questions we developed, constitute useful planning tools that offer practitioners effective, systematic and adaptable guidance in designing DLEs.

While understanding the mechanics of deeper learning is fundamental, deeper learning can only become a reality in our classrooms when we pay close attention to the drivers of deeper learning. This will allow learners to embrace a deeper learning mindset, which is required to develop academic tenacity or resilience, to work consistently over sustained periods of time, to engage in and master challenging tasks, to successfully interact with their peers and to self-regulate their learning.