Teaching for Deep Learning in a Second Grade Literacy Classroom

From a New Literacies Studies (NLS) perspective, deep learning involves the acquisition of social and cultural competencies valued within a disciplinary community, not merely propositional displays of what one knows. Drawn from a year-long qualitative inquiry, this case study examines how one exemplary second-grade literacy teacher taught toward deep learning, using a pedagogy of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). Selected episodes of instruction were analyzed in two phases. Initially, data were examined for evidence of three main competency sets of deep learning-cognitive, inter-personal, and intra-personal (National Research Council, 2012). In the latter phase, analysis focused on the teacher's pedagogical stances of situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice (NLG, 1996). Findings suggest that teaching for deep learning involved overt instruction of cognitive processes. Additionally, the teacher modeled critical framing processes of disciplinary practices situated within student-centered projects. Implications include how responsive literacy instruction may prime students' readiness to cultivate deep learning competencies. Inside today's classrooms, teaching for deep learning may necessitate addressing domain-based practices together with socially oriented work dispositions, allowing for both a production-oriented, text-centric view of learning (NLG, 1996) and an orientation toward space, spontaneity, and emergence in literacy engagement (Leander & Boldt, 2013).