Project description
Assignment 2: Essay
Title:-
Explain the distinction between deep, surface and strategic approaches to learning. Do you consider these useful concepts for
understanding how you learn?
For the first part of this task, you need to give an outline of key elements of these concepts.
For the second part, you are being asked to evaluate the usefulness of these concepts for understanding your own learning,
and you need to consider the strengths and also the weaknesses of analysing student learning in this way. To do this you
should draw on:
(i) relevant literature (from the module reading list, and you are also strongly encouraged to read beyond the reading list);
and
(ii) your own experiences of learning – prior to coming to university and at university this year.
Deadline: Week 12
Friday 3rd May, 12 noon
Please post essays in the appropriate box outside the refectory.
You are required to check your essay through Turnitin on the Moodle ‘Exploring Learning’ module site. Ensure you do this
before you hand your essay in. This will be checked by the module leader.
You must attach, and fill in, a Stage 1 assessment cover sheet for this assignment. These can be found in plastic holders on
the wall near the boxes. When writing your name, state which group you are in.
Both assignments should be word-processed, using 1.5 or double-spacing, with your name and student number on each page. You
need to number your pages, and include a word-count at the end of the assignment (before the References section for
assignment 2).
N.B. Please note that you will be penalised for work that is too short or too long (i.e. more than 10% under or above the
word limit for the assignment).
Critical reading
Criticality in university-level work does not necessarily mean being negative and dismissive of everything you read. There is
a difference between being sceptical and being cynical, and you can be both critical and positive at the same time (for
example about a work that you think is particularly strong in terms of its evidence and arguments). Being ‘critical’ means
paying attention to the reasons used to justify a claim or conclusion, and asking:
• How do we know this?
• How confident are we that this is true?
The Western intellectual tradition tends to employ Descarte’s notion of ‘dubitation’ or being doubtful or sceptical about
accepting all claims at face value. This involves asking for information about how a conclusion has been arrived at and
justified. A good recent example of this is education journalist Warwick Mansell’s blog analysing Secretary of State for
Education Michael Gove’s recent Parliamentary speech justifying the new Education Bill. Here’s the link:
http://www.educationbynumbers.org.uk/2011/02/18/michael-gove-and-the-launch-of-the-education-bill/
We do not always accept journalists’ ‘take’ as equivalent to rigorous academic analysis, but Mansell is one of the best in
the field and this blog is good enough to be circulated on university educationalists’ listserves. You don’t have to read the
whole thing, but you might want to read the first page and notice how Mansell approaches his analysis point by point. It’s a
good example of a writer presenting ‘disconfirming’ evidence to challenge the quality and persuasiveness of claims purporting
to be based on research.
Evidence is important in educational research, because in recent years a lot of publications arguing for various approaches
have emerged from think tanks that are associated with political parties or special interest groups. ‘Evidence-based policy’
has become a popular watchword in recent times, but sometimes this type of ‘study’ uses classic bad practice in research
design or argumentation, in an effort to ‘blind us with science’. This has also been happening in the United States, and you
can read more about this in the webpage of the Bunkum Awards put out by the National Education Policy Center at the
University of Colorado at Boulder.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2011/02/us-department-education-big-winner-2010-bunkum-awards
This is worth looking at for examples of how educational research can be poorly designed, conducted and analysed in order to
support pre-decided conclusions. Another source is Kevin Welner and Alex Molnar’s 2007 article from the US Education Week,
‘Truthiness in Education’, available at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/truthiness-education
Peer-reviewed, academic articles (while not always perfect) are more likely to be independent and well-conducted (otherwise
they don’t get published). There are a number of questions you can ask that will help you evaluate the credibility and
quality of publications about education.
Key questions about texts (regarding people and organisations):
• Who wrote it?
• Who was it written for (audience)?
• Who funded or sponsored it? (For example, projects funded by research funding councils such as the Economic and Social
Science Research Council are ‘kite-marked’ as being of high quality.)
• Who reviewed or edited it?
• Who published it?
Key questions about texts (regarding motives and context)
• Why was it written?
• When was it written?
• In what context was it written? (for example, does it come from a foreign country with a very different educational system
or structure?)
Key questions about texts (regarding evidence and argumentation)
• What evidence does it offer to support conclusions?
• If research-based, how solid is the:
• research design
• data collection
• data analysis?
• How solid are the arguments it uses to support conclusions?
• Does it consider the work of other researchers?
There are a number of things you can be alert to:
1 Unproven cause and effect
correlation ? causality
2 Selective use of evidence
Does the study ignore important contextual information or other researchers’ work?
Does it ignore (or fail to look for) disconfirming evidence?
3 Weak evidence (‘The plural of anecdote is not research data.’)
4 Suspect use of numbers and metrics (eg inappropriate ranking mechanisms)
5 Over-generalising
• about what has been found (Is it always true?)
• about what has not been found
‘absence of evidence’ ? ‘evidence of absence’
6 Suspect claims of validity (Does the data really answer the research question?)
7 Contradictory evidence (Offering a range of mutually contradictory arguments in the hopes that one of them must be true.)
Finally, for academic writing, you might find it helpful to have a ‘bank’ of phrases that help with expressing your thoughts
where the picture is complex and you can’t conclusively say that a particular position has been proved or disproved. You
might find the following range of sentence starters helpful in various contexts:
• There is currently insufficient evidence to conclude decisively that ….
• Evidence in this area is inconclusive…
• This is a contested area….One the one hand, supporters argue that…On the other, those who disagree maintain that…
• Whilst there is conflicting evidence of x, there seems to be agreement that y …
• It is outside the scope of this discussion to review the entire literature on x …, however, the sources examined lead me to
identify the following key areas of debate…