Design-Based Learning

Deep vs. Surface Learning highlights a divergence of opinion around what it means to know something. Deep Learning is associated with intrinsically motivated forms of engagement, characterized by making meaningful connections between new and previous understandings. Surface Learning tends to be associated with extrinsic motivations and is focused on the memorization and recall of information for formulaic responses.

Eco-Complexity Discourses is a sub-category of Coherence Discourses. It is an umbrella term that reaches across perspectives on learning that refuse separations of human from nature, material from transcendent, and part from whole. Across Eco-Complexity Discourses, learning is understood as synonymous with evolution.

Embeddedness Discourses comprise perspectives on learning that refuse separations of self from other and individual from collective. Perceived boundaries among persons and peoples are understood as heuristic conveniences, as collective phenomena are recognized to unfold from and to be enfolded in individual phenomena. Phrased differently, collective forms are understood as learning bodies.

Embodiment Discourses comprise perspectives on learning that refuse a separation of mental and physical. Mental and physical are understood as integrated and inseparable aspects of the body. Phrased differently, the body is not seen as something that a learner learns through, but as the learner. Correspondingly, behaviors are not seen as goals or indications of learning, but as integral elements of learning.