An alternative title for this chapter of Understanding by Design might be “Everything You Thought You Knew about Teaching and Assessment is Wrong.”  Perhaps that is somewhat hyperbolic, but not much.

I consider myself an autodidact — perhaps not in the sense of being largely self-taught, but in the sense that I have taught myself a lot.  I have taught myself a number of things, from CSS and HTML to Arthurian legend and how to cross-stitch.  I think that sometimes I am frustrated when I encounter students who cannot teach themselves.  I think I expect them to be able to transfer information more easily when I haven’t really given them the tools to do so.  A math problem mentioned in the book asks students to identify how many buses, each of which seats 36, would be needed to transport 1,128 people (2).  Of course, the route one should take to answer this question is to divide the number of people by 36.  According to Wiggins and McTighe, “Almost one-third of the the eighth-graders [taking the NAEP mathematics assessment] gave the following answer: ’31 remainder 12′” (2).  You and I can do our best face-palm imitations of Homer Simpson, but the fact remains that 1,128 divided by 36 does result in 31 remainder 12.  What the students didn’t understand is that those twelve leftover people would need a whole extra bus; therefore, they should have given the answer 32.  Just to show how stubborn I am, I had to work the math problem before I took the authors on faith.

Wiggins and McTighe discuss Benjamin Bloom’s influence on assessment through his Taxonomy.  As the authors point out, “As Bloom put it, understanding is the ability to marshal skills and facts wisely and appropriately, through effective application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation” (39).  To elaborate, “[d]oing something correctly, therefore, is not, by itself, evidence of understanding.  It might have been an accident or done by rote” (39).

What the authors argue we must enable students to do is to “transfer” information:

Knowledge and skill, then, are necessary elements of understanding, but not sufficient in themselves.  Understanding requires more: the ability to thoughtfully and actively “do” the work with discernment, as well as the ability to self-assess, justify, and critique such “doings.”  Transfer involves figuring out which knowledge and skill matters here and often adapting what we know to address the challenge at hand. (41)

On pages 42-43, Wiggins and McTighe examine the failure of students to transfer mathematical knowledge to solve problems.  I learned something new about myself as I read these two pages.  I have told myself for years that I am not a good math student.  I had to work very hard to earn B’s when I had good teacher who could explain mathematical concepts.  On the other hand, if I had a teacher that just couldn’t explain it in a way that I could understand, I might earn C’s.  My A in College Algebra didn’t convince me otherwise.  I told myself that I earned a good grade because my high school Trig/Pre-Calculus teacher was so good.  When we ventured into Calculus at the end of the course, I failed the quiz that week.  However, in working the following problem, I discovered that I had actually done something that “two-thirds of the tested students” who took the New York State Regents Exam couldn’t do.  I could transfer my understanding of a mathematical formula to a new situation.  Try this problem:

To get from his high school to his home, Jamal travels 5.0 miles east and then 4.0 miles north.  When Sheila goes to her home from the same high school, she travels 8.0 miles east and 2.0 miles south.  What is the measure of the shortest distance, to the nearest tenth of a mile, between Jamal’s home and Sheila’s home?

Once you’ve worked it out or given up, join me and read on.

I was so excited because I immediately saw this problem in terms of triangles.  I am pretty good at reading maps, and I visualized the routes Jamal and Sheila took.  After that, I realized I could probably use the Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem because the triangles formed were right triangles.  As I read further, I discovered I was correct.  The students who missed this question were not able to transfer a²+b²=c² to a real-life application, though they probably memorized the formula and correctly answered questions just like this one, only formed in such as way that they could clearly see the Pythagorean theorem was necessary to solve the problem.  I guess I’m not such a bad math student after all.  And by the way, the answer is 6.7 miles.  Um… right?  Tranfer?  Yes.  Confidence?  Not yet.

And how many times have I complained that students are fixated on grades and don’t really care what they have learned?  I suppose I have trouble practicing what I preach.  I saw my math grades as an indicator that I didn’t understand.  The problem, then, was not that I didn’t understand, but that the assessments provided by my instructors didn’t always enable me to prove that I understood.  I really don’t want to do this to my own students.

Wiggins and McTighe define “an understanding,” the noun, as “the successful result of trying to understand — the resultant grasp of an unobvious idea, and inference that makes meaning of many discrete (and perhaps seemingly insignificant) elements of knowledge” (43).  As teachers we generally choose our subject matter, if we are subject specialists as is commonly the case with secondary teachers, based upon our expertise.  I consider myself a good reader and writer, and I liked my junior and senior English teacher a great deal.  She inspired me to further my English education in college.  It was touch and go, as I was actually a better student of French than English.  I considered teaching foreign language, but one reason I decided not to is that in order to be a more attractive candidate, I would probably have to be able to teach more than one foreign language, and I was only ever interested in French (at least when I was younger, that is).  As we learn, we forget that we didn’t always know this stuff, and we gradually become experts.  Wiggins and McTighe warn against this “expert blind spot” (44).  You might be suffering from this blind spot, as I do, if you’ve ever said something like this:

Teachers do not optimize performance, even on external tests, by covering everything superficially.  Students end up forgetting or misunderstanding far more than is necessary, so that reteaching is needed throughout the school experience.  (How often have you said to your students, “My goodness, didn’t they teach you that in grade X?”). (45)

What do we get as a result?  “Students in general can do low-level tasks but are universally weak in higher-order work that requires transfer” (45).  As the authors argue, “We [make] it far more difficult for students to learn the ‘same’ things in more sophisticated and fluent ways later.  They will be completely puzzled by and often resistant to the need to rethink earlier knowledge” (45).  I know I have noticed this phenomenon in my own students, especially with regards to grammar.  Our school has rigorous grammar instruction in the 9th grade. If students do not learn the basics of grammar before they enter the 9th grade, I have found they are often resistant to learning it.  They don’t feel comfortable with the material, and they feel frustrated about being behind.  They also don’t often make use of teacher office hours or our Learning Center in order to catch up, but those few students who do invariably “get it” at last.  I know that my writing has improved over the last few years as I have been teaching this grammar curriculum.  I really think about all of the parts of language and how to put them together to get my ideas across with clarity.  It isn’t that I didn’t think about it before, but I really feel more grounded and sure of myself as a writer.  But just like my students, I was resistant toward rethinking “earlier knowledge.”  I have had to question my own beliefs regarding grammar instruction (and, to be fair, those of my previous teachers, professors, and my supervising teacher from my student teaching days).

As Wiggins and McTighe further explore understanding, they note “Children cannot be said to understand their own answer, even though it is correct, if they can only answer a question phrased just so” (48).  In so doing, students show not that they understand a concept, but that they can regurgitate a fact, solution, answer, etc., for a test.  Inevitably, this lack of transfer will result in the students’ forgetting the concept.  It’s not that they forgot it, but that they never really understood it at all.  Determining whether a student understands demands “crafting assessments to evoke transferability: finding out if students can take their learning and use it wisely, flexibly, and creatively” (48).  In other words, we should be “assessing for students’ capacity to use their knowledge thoughtfully and to apply it effectively in diverse settings — that is, to do the subject” (48).  A common pitfall in education is that we “attribute understanding when we see correct and intelligent-sounding answers on our own tests” (49).  I had a student who could memorize like no one’s business.  She memorized vocabulary for quizzes and made excellent grades, but I can’t recall seeing her use those new words in her writing, and later she might even ask me what the term meant if I casually used it in class.  She hated it when I changed my vocabulary instruction this year and adopted vocabulary cards.  I noticed an uptick in transfer of new vocabulary this year.  If I used a term in class, students might even point out that it was a vocabulary term.  Some of them even made a concerted effort to incorporate their new vocabulary words into their writing.  But this student did neither — she still didn’t know the terms later, and she still didn’t use them in her writing.  In addition, she seems to have to have information presented in exactly the same way each time, or she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.  In other words, I think this student’s problem is an inability to transfer.  I don’t think it’s entirely up to her — I needed to figure out a way to facilitate that transfer.  However, I figured out ways to get other students to transfer, so it wasn’t entirely me.  She insists that she is just a poor test-taker.  After reading this chapter, I think I have a better idea of what’s wrong.  She never understood the material in the first place, but she compensates so well with her excellent memory that she still manages to earn good grades.  Placement or tracking can be difficult for students like this girl because as teachers, we know something is off.  We know these students don’t “get it” like they should, but at the same time, they can earn grades that would seem to justify a higher placement.  What we need to do as teachers, then, is create authentic assessments that enable us to justify the grades we give.  I cannot justify the high grades this student received in my class; I know she doesn’t have the understanding that some of her peers had who didn’t earn grades as high as hers.

Wiggins and McTighe conclude the chapter with a discussion of misunderstanding, which “is not ignorance,” but “the mapping of a working idea in a plausible but incorrect way in a new situation” (51).  The authors point out, “Paradoxically, you have to have knowledge and the ability to transfer in order to misunderstand things” (51).

Thus evidence of misunderstanding is incredibly valuable to teachers, not a mere mistake to be corrected.  It signifies an attempted and plausible but unsuccessful transfer.  The challenge is to reward the try without reinforcing the mistake or dampening future transfer attempts.  In fact, many teachers not only fail to see the value in the feedback of student misunderstanding, they are somewhat threatened or irritated by it.  A teacher who loses patience with students who don’t “get” the lesson is, ironically, failing to understand — the Expert Blind Spot again… Take time to ponder: Hmmm, what is not obvious to the novices here?  What am I taking for granted that is easily misunderstood?  Why did they draw the conclusion they did? (51)

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]UbD, Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, understanding, curriculum, assessment, education[/tags]

Chapter One of Understanding by Design is an introduction to the concept of Backward Design, which I think is best summarized in Wiggins and McTighe’s statement that “We [teachers] cannot say how to teach for understanding or which material and activities to use until we are quite clear about which specific understandings we are after and what such understandings look like in practice” (14-15).  In other words, we need to know what we want the end result to be before we plan.  This might seem obvious, but we don’t do it as much as we should.  Most books discussing goal-setting advise readers to visualize the end and then determine how to get there.  What I know I have done at times is what the authors describe as “throw[ing] some content and activities against the wall and hop[ing] some of it sticks” (15).  Ouch.  In fact, their description of a unit on To Kill a Mockingbird could be an accurate description of some of my own planning:

Consider a typical episode of what might be called content-focused design instead of results-focused design.  The teacher might base a lesson on a particular topic (e.g. racial prejudice), select a resource (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird), choose specific instructional methods based on the resource and topic (e.g. Socratic seminar to discuss the book and cooperative groups to analyze stereotypical images in films and television), and hope thereby to cause learning (and meet a few English/language arts standards).  Finally, the teacher might think up a few essay questions and quizzes for assessing student understanding of the book.  (15)

Like I said, ouch.  As a matter of fact, if I am being truthful and honestly reflective about my practices, I have to admit that this is my most frequent approach to teaching literature.  That isn’t to say that my students aren’t learning, but clearly, I need to figure out what it is exactly that I want them to learn.  If I have one quibble with the UbD approach as described in this chapter, it is that the authors ask, “Why are we asking students to read this particular novel?” and later state, “Unless we begin our design work with a clear insight into larger purposes — whereby the book is properly thought of as a means to an educational end, not an end until itself — it is unlikely that all students will understand the book (and their performance obligations)” (15).  Well, then, why do we select any text?  Why do we read any novel?  I don’t think my first reason for selecting To Kill a Mockingbird would be teaching students about prejudice, although one could certainly learn about prejudice from the novel.  I simply think it’s a great book.  So how do I articulate that into a justification for selecting that text?  If I am selecting texts only as a means of communicating some large idea, does it even matter what we read as long as we get there?  I don’t think the authors believe this, but I do think they would like teachers to question why they select texts that they do: “Many teachers begin with and remain focused on textbooks, favored lessons, and time-honored activities — the inputs — rather than deriving those means from what is implied in the desired results — the outputs” (15).

The authors proceed to explore in more depth what they referred to in their introduction as “the twin sins of design”: activities-based instruction and coverage-based instruction.  If you have ever asked yourself as an educator why those students just won’t learn what you’re teaching, you’ll want to examine this section.  The authors advise teachers to ask “‘What should [the students] walk out the door able to understand, regardless of what activities or texts we use?’ and ‘What is evidence of such ability?’ and therefore, ‘What texts, activities, and methods will best enable such a result?'” (17).  In the margin of the book, I wrote, “I tell (I meant stand in front of the room and yak at) students too much, and I do all the work.  Then I complain when they don’t learn.”

Backward design is comprised of three stages: 1) Identify desired results; 2) Determine acceptable evidence; and 3) Plan learning experiences and instruction (17-18).  “In stage 1 we consider our goals, examine established content standards (national, state, district), and review curriculum expectations” (18).  In stage 2 we determine what “collected evidence [is] needed to document and validate that the desired learning has been achieved” (18).  Finally, in stage 3 we determine “appropriate instructional activities” (18).

I think the central reason why educators are somewhat leery of UbD is clear in the following passage:

This [backward design] is all quite logical when you come to understand it, but “backward” from the perspective of much habit and tradition in our field.  A major change from common practice occurs as designers must begin to think about assessment before deciding what and how they will teach.  Rather than creating assessments near the conclusion of a unit of study (or relying on the tests provided by textbook publishers, which may not completely or appropriately assess our standards and goals), backward design calls for us to make our goals or standards specific and concrete, in terms of assessment evidence, as we begin to plan a unit or course. (19)

In other words, UbD is looking at curriculum like we tend to look at goal-setting.

Later in the chapter, the authors suggest peer review of units or curricula might be helpful.  I agree, and I think this can be totally non-threatening and extremely helpful, but I am not sure some of my colleagues would agree.  Teachers are prickly about review.  I know I didn’t like it in the past when I’ve had to hand in lesson plans.  However, I think on the occasions when I have received good feedback regarding my ideas, it’s been critical to my improvement as an educator.  As teachers, we understand that feedback and assessment doesn’t always equal criticism when we do it, but when we receive it, we tend to find ourselves right back in the student’s chair again.

The chapter ends with an examination of a health teacher’s unit on nutrition.  As this unit is used as an example throughout the book, the completed UbD template for the unit plan appears in this chapter.  I have to say it’s an excellent unit plan.  The students are authentically assessed over their understanding of good nutrition; furthermore, they are asked to apply what they learn.  In fact, I think if I were the health teacher’s student, I would have found the unit interesting, engaging, and enjoyable.

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]UbD, Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, Backward Design, curriculum, assessment, education[/tags]

As I read Grant Wiggins’ and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design, I have decided to share my thoughts — my reading journal, if you will, as a few readers expressed an interest in hearing my thoughts about this book. I could be misrepresenting my readers, and please tell me if I am, but I sense a great deal of skepticism about UbD among educators. After Jay McTighe presented UbD to our faculty last year, I have to admit I became a fan of this approach, so caveat emptor.

First of all, the book has a nice feature that seems like a small thing, but is something I really appreciated as I began reading — space in the margins to write notes. Encouraged by this extra space, I took quite a few notes as I read. This post will focus on the book’s introduction.

If you are thinking about reading this book and are tempted to skip the introduction, my advice is — don’t! Back when we were students, I know we often skipped the introductions, as we didn’t consider them really part of the book. This introduction, however, is essential background. The introduction discusses four vignettes, two of which are true stories and two of which are “fictionalized accounts of familiar practice” (1). The two fictionalized accounts — one, a description of a unit on apples and the other, a description of a teacher in April realizing how much he has left to “cover” represent what the authors call the “twin sins of design” (3). The first unit is a string of activities related to apples. I have to admit that presented in the context of this book, the unit sounded absurd. I wasn’t sure what the students were supposed to learn about apples, aside from having some fun engaging in a series of activities, including making applesauce, going on a hayride, and writing stories about apples. The second unit is probably more familiar to high school teachers. Who among us hasn’t reached April and freaked out when we realize how much material we have left to cover? This year in American Literature, I ended up at The Great Gatsby. I don’t feel good about the lack of coverage the twentieth century received in my class, and that was one of the reasons I decided this book needed to be on my summer reading list. I need to plan smarter and better so that my students are exposed to a true survey of literature in my survey courses. I need to figure out what they need to understand, know, and be able to do. I love literature, and it is my compulsion to throw everything out there, but it is not the smartest thing to do given the constraints of time. I highlighted an appropriate quote: “[A]t its worst, a coverage orientation — marching through the textbook irrespective of priorities, desired results, learner needs and interests, or apt assessment evidence — may defeat its own aims” (3). While I agree with this statement, I wonder what our test-driven schools can do, especially in light of NCLB. I think that in some fields, teachers must feel obligated to ensure they approach the material from a coverage orientation. The problem, of course, is with the way we measure student success for NCLB. I am really glad I am not subject to these demands as a private school teacher. Later, the authors say “[m]any teachers believe that to design for understanding is incompatible with established content standards and state testing, we think that by the time you have read the entire book, you will consider this to be false” (9). Perhaps my fears about how well teachers can use UbD and still prepare students for standardized tests will be allayed.

I also made note of an interesting question asked in the introduction: “How can we accomplish the goal of understanding if the textbooks we use dispense volumes of out-of-context knowledge?” (4). One of my criticisms of the textbook series we are adopting, Prentice-Hall’s Literature, is that they pull in “Connections” from other disciplines that are tenuous at best. I do believe in the value of cross-curricular instruction, but I think forcing it when the connections are weak undermines learning and insults the intelligence of our students. The book will describe essential questions later in the text, but I was intrigued by the authors’ insistence that “[i]ndividual lessons are simply too short to allow for in-depth development of big ideas, exploration of essential questions, and authentic applications” (8). I completely agree and recall feeling frustrated by my middle school administrator’s insistence on my putting essential questions on the board each day. He was quite happy if they read something like “What is a pronoun?” or “Why do we need pronouns?”, but I always felt like I was simply rewording the objectives in the form of a question rather than really trying to communicate “big ideas” or overarching understanding of the material I was teaching.

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]UbD, Understanding by Design, Jay McTighe, Grant Wiggins, curriculum, assessment, education[/tags]