In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School

by Jal Mehta, Sarah Fine

Overview

“The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read.”—Jay Mathews, Washington Post

An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America’s most innovative classrooms to show what is working—and what isn’t—in our schools.

What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine’s quest to answer this question took them inside some of America’s most innovative schools and classrooms—places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn.

The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity.

This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education—one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674988392
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Jal Mehta is Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a recipient of the Morningstar Award. He is author of The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling.

Sarah Fine is a faculty member at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education and a Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She has taught in Washington, D.C., and Chula Vista, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The State of Deeper Learning in American High Schools 10

2 The Progressive Frontier: Project-Based Learning 45

3 No Excuses Schools: Benefits and Tradeoffs 98

4 International Baccalaureate: A System for Deeper Learning? 157

5 The Comprehensive High School: Performance versus Learning 196

6 Deeper Learning at the Margins: Why the Periphery Is More Vital than the Core 252

7 Deeper Teaching: Rigor, Joy, and Apprenticeship 308

8 Mastery, Identity, Creativity, and the Future of Schooling 362

Appendix: Methodology 403

Notes 415

Acknowledgments 441

Index 447

Editorial Reviews

03/18/2019

In this lucid and engaging study of the American secondary school system, education professors Mehta (The Allure of Order) and Fine offer a descriptive and prescriptive vision of “what it would take to create engaging, equitable, and intellectually vibrant learning environments” for all students. The authors first examine successful “thematic” schools, including a progressive school that uses project-based instruction, a “no excuses” high school that employs “regimes of tight discipline and control,” and a school that utilizes the International Baccalaureate program, to discover the “school-level characteristics” that drive superior test scores, high college admission, and “deep cognitive engagement.” They conclude that mastery, identity, and creativity define the “powerful learning experiences” emerging from classrooms that offer “a deep focus on thinking and reasoning,” “balance rigor with joy,” and regard students as meaning-makers rather than passive recipients of knowledge. The authors offer lively vignettes, a framework grounded in history and research, and a powerful, precise, and organized critical analysis. Mehta and Fine’s account of a holistic model for cultivating “learners ready to meet the challenges of the modern world” will be as accessible to an intelligent parent as to a school board administrator. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

In Search of Deeper Learning is a dazzling book that takes us on a fantastic journey into what the depths of learning look like, and why they are so tantalizingly beyond our current collective grasp. Read every page of this stunning portrayal of what would be required to save society through deep learning, while recognizing the sandbags of inertia that laden the status quo.

Michael Fullan

Compellingly argued, thoroughly researched, and accessibly written…Offers a clear set of ideas for moving forward if we make the goal of deeper learning a priority in American education.

Contemporary Sociology - Lisa M. Nunn

This book is a remarkably fresh, balanced, research-based look at American high schools. It is a powerful provocation for discussing what a good high school is, and what good teaching looks like. Every high school faculty should use it as a common read: it will open minds and shatter stereotypes.

Ron Berger

Having discovered how the best environments promote deeper learning, Mehta and Fine suggest ways teachers and schools can apply some of these principles to their classrooms and hallways.

MindShift - Linda Flanagan

In their brave search for depth in American high schools, scholars Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine suffered many disappointments… Undeterred, they spent 750 hours observing classes, interviewed more than 300 people, and produced the best book on high school dynamics I have ever read.

Jay Mathews

Not since The Good High School and Horace’s Compromise in the 1980s has there been a book which so comprehensively examines the American high school. In Search of Deeper Learning offers vivid examples of joyful and engaging classrooms along with keen insights about what it will take to make these kinds of classrooms the norm rather than the exception in our schools. A must-read for anyone interested in the fate of the American high school.

Linda Darling-Hammond

A hopeful, easy-to-read narrative on what the best teachers do and what deep, engaging learning looks like for students. Grab this text if you’re looking for a celebration of what’s possible in American schools.

Edutopia - Marissa King

In Search of Deeper Learning is both theoretically sophisticated and deeply accessible. This is the first and only book to depict not just the constraints on good teaching, but also how good teachers transcend them. A superb book in every way: timely, lively, and entertaining.

Jonathan Zimmerman