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The elements that make up this approach are not necessarily new — great teachers have been employing these tactics for years. But now there’s a movement to codify the different pieces that define the deeper learning approach, and to spread the knowledge from teacher to teacher, school to school in the form of a Deeper Learning MOOC (massive open online course), organized by a group of schools, non-profits, and sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation.

So what defines deeper learning? This group has identified six competencies: mastering content, critical thinking, effective written and oral communication, collaboration, learning how to learn, and developing academic mindsets.

“Before we assess, we need to know what we are assessing for,” said Marc Chun, program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. What does effective collaboration look like? What does it really look like to be a critical thinker? These skill are more oriented towards process than content, making them difficult to assess in a standardized way.

What is needed is a broad culture of innovation where diverse skills and dispositions merge to offer the best chance of a unique idea emerging and importantly making it to market. Significantly the definition of innovation very much includes the ability to deliver on the imaginative ideas Australians are known for but are presently handing off to international developers to capitalise on. For schools such a definition is useful as it encourages a shift away from vague conversations about creativity and imagination and looks at how these skills can be used in ways that bring about change

Innovation requires a pedagogy that values a student focused learning processes over teacher directed transfer of knowledge. Teaching for innovation is by nature messy and imprecise. In the short term results on traditional assessments may not be what we would expect from traditional methods but if we desire to produce innovators this needs to be accepted