Teaching for Deep Learning.

The authors have been engaged in research focused on students' depth of learning as well as teachers' efforts to foster deep learning. Findings from a study examining the teaching practices and student learning outcomes of sixtyfour teachers in seventeen different states (Smith et al. 2005) indicated that most of the learning in these classrooms was characterized by reproduction, categorizing of information, or replication of a simple procedure. In addition to these and other findings, in this article, the authors provide a definition of surface and deep learning and describe the structure of the observed learning outcome taxonomy, which was used to evaluate depth of learning. The authors also provide implications for practitioners interested in fostering deep student learning.