Deep Active Learning ─ Toward Greater Depth in University Education

This is the first book to connect the concepts of active learning and deep learning, and to delineate theory and practice through collaboration between scholars in higher education from three countries (Japan, the United States, and Sweden) as well as different subject areas (education, psychology, learning science, teacher training, dentistry, and business).

It is only since the beginning of the twenty-first century that active learning has become key to the shift from teaching to learning in Japanese higher education. However, “active learning” in Japan, as in many other countries, is just an umbrella term for teaching methods that promote students’ active participation, such as group work, discussions, presentations, and so on.

What is needed for students is not just active learning but deep active learning. Deep learning focuses on content and quality of learning whereas active learning, especially in Japan, focuses on methods of learning. Deep active learning is placed at the intersection of active learning and deep learning, referring to learning that engages students with the world as an object of learning while interacting with others, and helps the students connect what they are learning with their previous knowledge and experiences as well as their future lives.

What curricula, pedagogies, assessments and learning environments facilitate such deep active learning? This book attempts to respond to that question by linking theory with practice.

Dr. Kayo Matsushita has been a professor of the Center for the Promotion of Excellence in Higher Education and the Graduate School of Education at Kyoto University since 2004. She received her Ph.D. in education from Kyoto University. After having completed the doctoral program in Education at Kyoto University, she served as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Education, Kyoto University and an associate professor at the Faculty of Education, Gunma University. She has been conducting research and development of teaching and learning in higher education as well as school education. Her present research focus is learning assessment, especially in the form of performance assessment. She is an author of Performance Assessment (in Japanese, Nipponhyojun, 2007), an editor of Does New Concept of Ability Change Education: Gakuryoku, Literacy, and Competency? (in Japanese, Minerva Shobo, 2010), and a co-editor of Building Networks in Higher Education: Towards the Future of Faculty Development (Maruzen Planet, 2011), Transition from High School & University to Work (in Japanese, Nakanishiya, 2014), and Assessment of Active Learning (in Japanese, Toshindo, 2016). She is the chief editor and a council member of the Japan Association for College and University Education, a council member of the Japanese Educational Research Association, the Japanese Society for Curriculum Studies and the National Association for the Study of Educational Methods, and a member of the Science Council of Japan.