Summary
Depth education is an approach to teaching and learning that builds people’s capacity to stay with complexity, uncertainty and their own part in systemic harm, without telling them what to conclude. It comes from the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective, led by Vanessa Andreotti, and is taught through courses at the University of Victoria in Canada, among them the Facing Human Wrongs series.
Its defining contrast is with mastery education. In the words of the course description, “depth education does not predetermine what learners should think or do”; it aims to widen the ability to hold “a multiplicity of perspectives, paradoxical claims, and conflictual relationships without feeling overwhelmed or immobilized”.
Rationale
One of us is a Facing Human Wrongs alum, and we interviewed a member of the collective behind it. It’s the kind of educational practice we mean by “Exploring unlearning and deconditioning”.