Strategic learning, or what Paulo Freire called the banking model of education, basically assumes that teachers tell students something and when students can tell it back, they have learned. In contrast, deep learning assumes that teachers facilitate the process of students putting facts and figures into context – the process of making meaning. Deeper learning aims to ascend students through Bloom’s taxonomy of thought, toward application, analysis, and synthesis.
As Bain asserts, “The most successful teachers expect the highest levels of development from their students. They reject the view of teaching as nothing more than delivering correct answers to students and learning as simply remembering those deliveries. They expect their students to rise above the category of received knowers, something they reflect in the way they teach and assess their students” (45).
In my mind, I see no distinction between the traditional division of student affairs and academic affairs when it comes to teaching. If our primary focus is student learning – in particular the development of knowledge and skills relevant to self, workforce, and civic development – why do we limit this enterprise to only part of the student experience? And so, as a student advisor and coordinator of student development activities, I firmly claim my ground as a teacher, just as a staff member in financial aid or career development or records should.
So, then, I am accepting responsibility for the question: When I look at my own practice with Student Affairs, how often do I focus on delivering the correct answer (so that the student can complete their FAFSA or register for the right course or turn in their transfer application on time)? Probably more than I would like to admit in light of deep versus strategic learning.
Bain then adds, “Rather than just thinking in terms of teaching history, biology, chemistry, or other topics, they [the best teachers] talked about teaching students to understand, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate evidence and conclusions” (46).
Certainly, it takes more time and more scaffolding to change from service delivery (of correct answers) to student learning. But, if you step back, does it really? Because how many times will a student return for the correct answer? Alternatively, what is our future interaction with a student if we expend the time and effort to facilitate deep learning?
I will conclude with Bain: “Highly effective teachers design better learning experiences for their students in part because they conceive of teaching as fostering learning. Everything they do stems from their strong concern for and understanding of the development of their students. They follow few traditions blindly and recognize when change in the conventional course is both necessary and possible” (67).
Bibliography
Bain, K. (2004). What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
