Understanding by Design: The Big Picture: UbD as Curriculum Framework

In “The Big Picture: UbD as Curriculum Framework,” Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe elevate the discussion of backward design to its application for designing K-16 curricula.  OK, I see the benefits, and I’m ready to start, but I don’t see how everyone who factors in designing the curricula for K-16 students would get on board with me.  In fact, I don’t even think all of my peers at my same school, indeed in my department, would all be willing to work with me. 

I have another issue to contend with — neither I nor anyone else at my school can tell our “feeder” schools what to do with curriculum.  It’s great that occasionally they ask us for our input, but we are all separate entities, and they do not report to us, nor we to them, nor any of us to a larger “district” office, as in the case of public schools. I happen to work with some very thoughtful colleagues who plan learning experiences with the best interests of their students at heart.  In fact, I am, at times, awed by their ideas and the collegial atmosphere in my school.  However, not all of them necessarily feel UbD is the way to go, and they have the freedom not to go in that direction.

My sense that I have been cheated because my education was not structured using UbD grows as I continue reading this book.

The examinations of rubric criteria and longitudinal rubrics in this chapter were somewhat dry, but I identified with the statement “As with all rubrics, students will need to see examples of work for each score point if the rubric is to be useful for self-assessment, self-adjustment, and understanding of the teacher’s final judgment” (287).  This is piece I am missing in terms of using rubrics with students, I think.  Realistically, it will take quite some time to compile models of each score point.  In the interim, I will continue to use rubrics, but will personalize comments for students so that they understand why they were assessed certain grades.

You know, this chapter certainly drove home a suspicion I have held for some time.  Bright students who succeed in school often do so in spite of the education they’re receiving and not because of it.  I am really excited by the prospect of applying what I have learned about UbD, but a growing frustration with not being able to change everything burbles beneath the surface.  As Wiggins and McTighe so aptly note, “centuries of tradition die hard” (299).  We “falsely believe that what worked for [us] will likely work for most others” (301).  Does this description remind you of anyone you’ve every worked with?

Chapter Nine: Planning for Learning

I’d be willing to bet most teachers’ favorite part of planning is brainstorming creative ways to evaluate students. As Wiggins and McTighe noted earlier in  Understanding by Design, we are often eager to skip all the way to Stage 3 — planning activities, assessments, and projects. I like that the authors do not necessarily argue against direct instruction, nor do they debate about particular teaching methods (such as lecture versus Socratic seminar or other myriad variations). They argue instead that any type of instruction, like any other facet of the learning experience, needs to have a purpose leading to desired understandings:

Regardless of our teaching strengths, preferred style, or comfortable habits, the logic of backward design requires that we put to the test any proposed learning activity, including “teaching,” against the particulars of Stages 1 and 2. (192)

I think sometimes I like to stand in front of the class to hear myself talk. Well, not really, but I remember how freeing it felt this year to introduce alternative ways of structuring my class that kept me out of the front of the classroom so much. I typically fall back into that pattern of standing in front of the room and telling students what I know. And perhaps some of them learn some things, but I would definitely like my classes to be more engaging on a regular basis.

Regarding the authors’ acronym WHERETO, I really think this mnemonic device would work better if the elements were simplified and began with the letter they represent. For example, “W — Ensure that students understand WHERE the unit is headed, and WHY” (197). Why not simply phrase it “W — WHERE are you going and WHY?”

I agree with Wiggins in McTighe that “[a]ll too rarely do students know where a lesson or unit is headed in terms of their own ultimate performance obligations” (198). I do think it will be helpful to tell students from day one what the ultimate goals are so they have them in mind as they work.

chapter 6: Crafting Understandings

         While I was reading chapter six, I felt struck by the same realization as the health teacher Bob, whom Wiggins and McTighe use as an illustration throughout the book: “Boy, this is difficult, but I already see the benefits of getting sharper on what, specifically, my students need to come away understanding” (145).

          This chapter begins by asking the reader to compare examples of understandings to nonexamples and determine what generalizations we can make about understanding(127). In other words, how do we distinguish between examples and nonexamples? These are my observations, made before I read and determined what the authors might say about the chart (127):

1.             The understandings are statements, complete sentences, whereas the nonexamples were generally phrases.

2.            The understandings were not general or vague.

3.            The understandings explain how something works or show relationships.

4.            The understandings can be tested or tried out, like scientific hypotheses.

           When I resumed reading, I realized I didn’t notice the way each understanding is acquired.

            It is unlikely that learners will immediately and completely understand the meaning of the statement simply by hearing it or reading it. They will need to inquire, to think about and work with it. In other words, the understanding will need to be uncovered, because it is abstract and not immediately obvious. (127)

            That is, I couldn’t articulate this idea. I think I was on to something when I noticed the understandings were not general or vague, but I didn’t quite nail the reason why.

One thought that recurred to me over and over as I read this chapter is the notion that much of science education has understanding right. We formulate hypotheses, test those hypotheses, and come to an understanding about why something is the way it is.

             I like the fact that whenever possible, Wiggins and McTighe try to use examples from a variety of disciplines. The challenge in creating so many examples must have been great, but as reader, I really appreciate it because it helps me see how to apply what I’m learning as I read to my own discipline.

As the authors state, “When our teaching merely covers content without subjecting it to inquiry, we may well be perpetrating the very misunderstanding and amnesia we decry” (132).

 “Students should understand that…” Instead, “Students will identify…” seems to indicate that students simply need to plug in the correct responses instead of really understand why, for example, people in the two regions disagreed about so many fundamental issues .

Ultimately one of the problems in planning is that some of us, myself included, have sometimes considered the plans or assessments as the end result rather than a means to a result. No wonder students ask us why we’re doing something or what the point is. If we haven’t figured out a way to articulate that yes, there is a point, and a very good one, we run the risk of sending the message that there is no point or that we don’t know what the point is, either.

           I think Wiggins and McTighe have a valid point about the transferability of these types of standards. Asking them to, for example, merely identify isn’t enough if we want to engage higher order thinking skills. On Bloom’s Taxonomy, “identifying” would be at the bottom in Knowledge. It would not be anywhere near the Application, Synthesis, and Evaluation levels. If that is the case, and we are talking about standards for an entire curriculum and not just, say, a lesson, then I think they need to be framed in a more open-ended way.

Essential Questions

As I read the chapter “Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding”  I realized that many educators I know have an erroneous understanding of what essential questions are and how to use them.  For instance, I can remember the middle school principal I worked with encouraging me to post essential questions on my board.  I didn’t know what they were, and he explained them as what you want the students to get out of the lesson, that is the objectives, posed in question form.  So my initial forays into composing essential questions looked something like “How do we use semicolons?”  Where is the opportunity for intense inquiry in that?.
All of us have some line of inquiry, some essential questions, that we haven’t answered yet.  For example, one of mine might be “What teaching methods and practices will most engage my students and enable them to leave my class, as our school’s mission statement promises, a ‘knowledgeable, thinking, responsible, Jewish adult’?”  In posing essential questions of this type, we teach our student that “education is not just about learning ‘the answer’ but about learning how to learn” (108).  In our culture, we often nail politicians for “waffling” when they change their minds about something.  If we were really teaching our students how to think, as adults they might realize that “we are likely to change our minds in response to reflection and experience concerning such questions as we go through life, and changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial” (108).
This chapter ends with a bang in terms of thought provoking ideas.  “Our students need a curriculum that treats them more like potential performers than sideline observers” (122).  Students describe school or classes as something to get through.  No wonder!  They  aren’t really often asked to participate in it, to use what they know or think about what they’re learning beyond regurgitating for a test!  I want my class to be a class that students will say is challenging and makes them think about things in new ways.  One quibble I have always had with RateMyTeachers.com and the similar RateMyProfessors.com is that one of their criteria for a good teacher is an easy class.  In what way do we learn anything, and therefore by extension can we say a teacher is good if we are only after an easy class, which really means an easy A?  Is that all we care about?  That grade?  Well, yes, it can be.  We have all been frustrated, I’m sure, at one time or another by hearing “Is this going to be on the test? Is this what you want?  How long does the paper have to be?” (122).  What we need to do, then, is step back and see whether we have created a class based on “an unending stream of leading questions” (122).
We sometimes send students the message that getting through the content is more important than their own questions.  We have trained students that not to know something and be curious about it is risky.
The thought that struck me as I finished the chapter is that students learn in spiteof school too often, and not because of school.

Chapter 3: Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

The chapter describes and summarizes the terms “Established Goals, Understandings, Essential Questions, Knowledge, and Skills” (56). I too found the idea of deciding what is “worth an adult’s knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult,” to be particularly insightful.

Essential questions highlights the BIG IDEAS that are central to the design; ideas that the work will require students to address. By asking for "Essential Questions" designers are encouraged to avoid coverage and to commit to genuine inquiry — the discussion, reflection, problem solving, research, and debate that are the requisites for developing deep understanding of essential ideas.

Wiggins and McTighe go on to discuss the difference between “big ideas” and “basics.” Here I like the authors’ statement that “we need a ‘preponderance of evidence’ in order to ‘convict’ a student of meeting stated goals” (69). In other words, we must make sure students have mastered content standards through a wide variety of measurements before we can say they are definitely guilty of “understanding” content.

We have to help students to "learn how to learn" and "how to perform. Both have a vital mission when we teach. On the other hand, mastery of content is not the AIM of instruction, but a means. Understandings have to be inferred from well-designed and well-facilitated experiences, whereas a good deal of knowledge can be acquired from readings or lectures.

        Because BIG IDEAS are inherently transferable, they help to connect discrete topics and skills. Big ideas may be thought of as a linchpin (the device that keeps the wheel in place on the axle).

        The challenge is to identify a few BIG IDEAS and carefully design around them, resisting the temptation to teach everything of possible value for each topic.

         Some BIG IDEAS are:

                      Broad and abstract;

                      Represented by one or two words;

                      Universal in application;

                     Timeless;

                      Represented by different examples that share common attributes.

   

     What is big to the teacher or the expert in the field is often abstract, lifeless, confusing or irrelevant to the student. Indeed the challenge of teaching for understanding is largely the challenge of making the big ideas in the field become big in the mind of the learner.

         Authentic challenges involve realistic situations, where the context of the task is as faithful as possible to the real-world opportunities and difficulties. Transfer involves expertly addressing authentic challenges at core tasks, where the content is a means. Tasks can be ranked by the degree of independent reach by the learner in completing them: "far transfer", "near transfer", "Minimal transfer" and no transfer, but simple recall.

In terms of “finding big ideas,” the authors suggested two tips in particular that I think will be useful: “look carefully at state standards” and “circle key recurring nouns in standards documents to highlight big ideas and the recurring verbs to identify core tasks” (73-74). The authors remind us again that we are experts as teachers, and the “Expert Blind Spot” can prevent us from making big ideas obvious to students. We need to think like students in order to help them grasp big ideas and truly understand the content.

Backward Design

One of the main ideas is focused on developing goals and objectives when we do our planning. The teaching job is not done randomly; it needs guidance, preparation and elaboration. On one hand, the guidance is given by the national or institutional standards that specify what students should know and be able to do. On the other hand, preparation and elaboration are on the teacher’s criteria and creativity. Teacher’s criteria will be understood as the objectives or results we want to get after doing our lesson. The creativity will be used when we want to give the correct order to our lesson using the content, the appropriate method and the proper activities.

Here appears the concept of “Backward Design”. The backwards design model centers on the idea that the design process should begin with identifying the desired results and then "work backwards" to develop instruction rather than the traditional approach which is to define what topics need to be covered. In other words, we should use a results-focused design instead of a content-focused design.

Their framework identifies three main stages:

•                Stage 1: Identify desired results: It means the learning that should endure over the long term. This is referred to as the “enduring understanding”. This requires “clarity about priorities” (Wiggins).

•                Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence: We need to establish what constitutes acceptable evidence of competency in the outcomes and results. To define what forms of assessment will demonstrate that the student acquired the knowledge, understanding, and skill to answer the questions. There are three types of assessments: Performance Task, Criteria Referenced Assessment (quizzes, test, prompts) and Unprompted Assessment and Self-Assessment (observations, dialogues, etc.).

•                Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction: It means instructional strategies and learning experiences that equip students to develop and demonstrate the desired understanding, bringing students to these competency levels.