Teresa Connolly argues that a profound understanding of key chemistry concepts and processes is as fundamental to scientific literacy as mastering complex procedures and skills, such as performing experiments, interpreting data or communicating one’s findings using specific text types. However, she points out that such an understanding of chemical concepts is inhibited not only by learners’ poor command of academic language but also by the fact that chemical processes can be observed at different levels of abstraction. This poses a specific challenge in chemistry because learners often report having difficulties distinguishing clearly between processes at the sub-microscopic, the microscopic and the macroscopic level, which will lead to misconceptions and prevent deeper understanding. To address that issue, Connolly’s deeper learning episode on redox reactions offers engaging ways of promoting scientific reasoning through a series of student-led experiments and inquiry. Systematic guidance in academic language use will enable learners to express their findings and observations precisely and adequately and thus help them distinguish the processes occurring at various levels of abstraction with increasing ease and confidence.

Spoken or written texts are coherent sequences of sentences. Text comprehension is equivalent to the construction of multiple mental representations in working memory. It is based on an interaction between external text information and internal prior knowledge information stored in long-term memory. Mental representations include a text surface representation, a propositional representation, and a mental model. They are characterized by different forgetting rates. As speakers and authors omit information which can be easily completed by listeners and readers, text comprehension always includes inferences. Listening and reading comprehension use the same lexicon and the same syntax but qualitatively different text surface structures. Due to local and global coherence of texts, comprehension is also a process of mental coherence formation. Limitations of working memory require focused attention on the construction of topic-specific mental models which are carried along from sentence to sentence by a flow of consciousness. Speakers and authors can direct this process through topic information within the text surface.

We have coined the term deeper learning episode (DLE) to emphasise the idea that PTDL’s overriding objective is to offer opportunities for deeper learning through a focus on subject-specific literacies. Also, we felt the need to introduce a new term that is not limited to specific timetabled lessons. A DLE extends over a series of lessons, depending not only on the intentions, purposes and outcomes of learning but, more importantly, on whether or not those intentions, purposes and outcomes translate into deeper learning. A DLE organically flows into the next one when learners can demonstrate deep understanding of the specific content or sufficient mastery of the targeted skills. Otherwise, it is time for us teachers to go back to the drawing board to design and offer more opportunities for learners to understand and practise. Each DLE consists of a number of interconnected phases where teachers and learners jointly engage in complimentary activities to incite and sustain deeper learning processes (see Figure 4.1).

Nicole Berg’s deeper learning episode aims at improving learners’ ability to orally explain geography. To do that, learners will listen to podcasts on global warming to analyse expert explanations. This way, they will learn about the nature and structure of scientific explanations in context. In addition, learners will decode, analyse and practise prosodic features of spoken language (in terms of intonation, stress, pausing and phonological chunking). This will support storage and retrieval of academic language elements from long-term-memory. Ultimately, learners will structure and formulate their own oral explanations of subject-specific content. This highly innovative approach to promoting oral language skills uses insights into the mechanics of language acquisition and speech production to facilitate subject learning.

Stefan Altmeyer and Johannes Kerbeck explore religious education as a means for enabling learners to build life-relevant knowledge and critical understanding. They argue that religious literacies are underpinned by an awareness of inter-religious views ranging from the neutral to critical and ultimately leading to positioning individual decisions and identities within religion-aware thinking. Learners are guided along a pathway from understanding ‘religious language’ to actively engaging in religious dialogue and using the ‘language of religion’ in appropriate, critical and reflective ways. Investigating the differences between subjective and objective positionality involves learners in facing changing perspectives that build on developing basic religious knowledge, applying their understanding to lived experiences and constructing critical yet relevant evaluations of arguments and counter-arguments. When these evaluations demonstrate appropriate use of the ‘correlative’ or ‘dialogic’ principle of religious learning, students exhibit deeper understanding. The learning episode focuses on a national initiative on global development featuring a video-streamed inter-religious panel discussion with experts from different creeds. Drawing on issues of diversity, empathy, solidarity and responsibility and using digital media, learners are invited to prepare for, actively participate in and connect personally with issues through deep reflection informed by religious literacies development.

Frederic Taveau makes a strong argument for reconceptualising modern languages – in this case French – as a subject discipline, with knowledge domains and pathways that explore alternative ways of learning and using language with beginner or near-beginner students. By foregrounding textual fluency, he challenges more traditional approaches to language learning that emphasise linguistic systems. Instead, he focuses on the use of multimodal literary texts to promote meaning-making and language learning through deepening learners’ critical and cultural awareness of relevant, motivating real-world phenomena. Taveau outlines the processes involved in enabling novice learners of French to become more self-confident and self-directed creative literary writers using language in unprecedented ways. Through a series of scaffolded text-centred learning episodes, learners are guided through pluriliteracies-based steps, increasingly using cognitive discourse functions creatively and confidently (explaining, describing, classifying, arguing and evaluating) to construct their own descriptive literary texts on a Gothic theme. These texts are ‘owned’ by students, demonstrating language learning as a creative, motivating means to understanding their world and that of others.

Text and pictures serve different purposes in multimedia comprehension. Conceptual processing of texts and pictures results in propositions, whereby text-based propositions and picture-based propositions specialize in different kinds of information. These propositions are merged into an overarching conceptual semantic network guiding mental model construction. The construction process receives descriptive guidance by text-based and picture-based propositional representations as well as depictive guidance by perceptual representation of pictures through structure mapping. Because texts are more constrained in terms of processing order, they can provide more conceptual guidance through a subject matter than pictures. A distinction can be made between initial model construction and adaptive model specification. Initial model construction aims at general coherence formation; adaptive model specification aims at selective processing of task-relevant information. Initial mental model construction is more likely to be text-driven than adaptive mental model specification, while adaptive mental model specification is more likely to be picture-driven than initial mental model construction.

Susanne Staschen-Dielmann’s history episode is designed to offer learners deep understanding and command of a specific historical genre. Criteria-centred evaluation is one of the most challenging text types to master in history. It requires the ability to analyse and evaluate historical events from different perspectives in a nuanced way through a set of criteria. A series of tasks leads to students creating instructional videos for other students. In those videos, students explore aspects of society in the German Empire guided by the research question: ‘After unifying the German Reich with “blood and iron” in 1871, did Bismarck manage to unify German society as a nation?’ After sharing their findings on different social and political factions and analysing similarities and differences according to social, political, economic and ideological positions, learners collaboratively assess the degree of national unity or disunity in Germany under Bismarck, following the principles of criteria-centred evaluation.

Sign systems help to create descriptive and depictive representations. Descriptive representations operate on symbols. They are based on conceptual analyses identifying objects or events as well as attributes and interrelations. Attributes and relations are ascribed by predications to entities according to syntactic rules resulting in so-called propositions (“idea units”). These propositions can be integrated into coherent semantic networks. Propositional representations are considered as mental structures which can be externalized in the form of spoken or written texts. Despite their informational incompleteness, descriptions have high representational power. Depictive representations are based on inherent commonalities between a representing object and the represented subject matter. The inherent commonalities can be based on similarity or analogy. These representations are complete with regard to a certain class of information. Due to their completeness and consistency and because information can be read off directly, depictive representations have high computational efficiency.

For knowledge to become transferable, it needs to be stored in long-term memory in such a way that learners can successfully retrieve it. However, ‘merely’ committing information to long-term memory does not equal deeper learning. Teaching that focuses mostly on facts and does not provide learners with ample opportunities to use and apply their knowledge will lead to so-called inert knowledge, which cannot be accessed to solve problems. To really understand content, our learners need to establish connections between new information and prior knowledge, relate new information to larger contexts and understand its relevance inside and outside the classroom.

For their politics lessons Susanne Staschen-Dielmann and Saskia Helm create a digital learnscape based on the well-known simulation Model United Nations (MUN) – usually based on the organisation of an international conference. The idea of a digital MUN emerged during the first lockdown in Great Britain and was refined using pluriliteracies principles during the second one. Within the authentic setting of a United Nations conference, learners are guided through more and more sophisticated text-production tasks. These include writing a policy cycle analysis, a draft resolution and an opening speech. Learners take part in a highly formalised debate, which requires the use of an extremely elaborate register. The digital learning space is used to ensure formal and informal communication and information exchange within groups of varying sizes as well as providing meaningful feedback.

The mathematics chapter by Susanne Prediger and Anna-Katharina Roos offers profound insights into the nature of mathematical literacy. It documents a precise account of the way the knowledge and activity domains of doing, organising, explaining and arguing translate into algebraic activities and procedures. Using the example of transformation and transformation rules, they argue that algebraic rules that are not underpinned with meaning will become arbitrary and lead to typical student errors. They make the case for algebraic reasoning as a way of developing conceptual understanding and promoting deeper learning in the maths classroom. Based on their empirical classroom research, the authors propose three principles to inform the design of deeper learning episodes in mathematics: connecting multiple representations and languages, engaging learners in rich discourse practice and employing macro-level scaffolding that integrates mathematics and language learning.

The physics chapter by Klaus Wendt, Andreas Pysik and Johannes Lhotzky aims at promoting deeper understanding of the complex phenomenon of the rainbow and encourages learners to demonstrate and share their understanding through a Wikipedia article. In this deeper learning episode, learners carry out a number of experiments on spectral colours and colour sequences. They organise the information gathered and explain the physics concepts and processes underlying the phenomenon. The authors use innovative ways of scaffolding academic language development to increase the meaning-making potential of younger learners.

Comprehension can be the starting point for further cognitive activities such as thinking and problem-solving. Productive thinking requires a specific interaction between descriptive and depictive representations combining representational power and inferential power. The interaction takes place through processes of mental model construction and model inspection. Descriptive representations are combined and coordinated with the corresponding depictive representations, whereby each representation constrains the construction and usage of the other representation. Model inspection requires systematic and exhaustive interrogation of depictive representations in order to read off relevant information. Depictive representations have to grasp task-relevant structures and facilitate performance of the required procedures. Required operations should not be difficult to perform and the sequences of operations should be relatively short. Inappropriate perceptual structures of visualizations can obscure relevant structural attributes, preventing the application of correct procedures and stimulating the application of incorrect procedures.