Teachers
are designers. An essential act of our profession is the design of
curriculum and learning experiences to meet specified purposes. We are
also designers of assessments to diagnose student needs to guide our
teaching and to enable us, our students, and others (parents and
administrators) to determine whether our goals have been achieved, that
is, did the students learn and understand the desired knowledge?
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
Understanding by Design, backward design!
In
recent years the area of designing curriculum has become of prime
importance in schools. This is particularly critical as schools begin
to become familiar with and deconstruct the Australian Curriculum for
the purpose of designing appropriate learning and teaching program for
their students. The theory which has been adopted as the way to go is
from the work of Wiggins and McTighe
in the area of Backward Design. Everywhere one goes, where curriculum
is being developed and implemented we hear the term UBD or rather Understanding By Design.
Backward Design planning is a rather logical and reasonable idea which has always been the way of operation for many teachers, but not all.
By clearly articulating the UBD process, Wiggins
and McTighe have created a way of thinking which has had great
penetration into the area of curriculum planning and in turn pedagogy.
Watch these short videos on Learning design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4isSHf3SBuQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgNODvvsgxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8F1SnWaIfE
A few observations and gems of comment from the readings on Wiggins and McTighe
• Teachers are designers.
• "Clarifying the desired results of our teaching, how will we ever know whether our designs are appropriate or arbitrary?"
• How will we distinguish merely interesting learning from effective learning?
• Good design, … is about learning to be more thoughtful and specific about our purposes and what they imply.
•
The shift involves thinking a great deal, first, about the specific
learnings sought, and the evidence of such learning, before thinking
about what we as the teacher, will do or provide in teaching and
learning activities.
• "The challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow."
• “...best designs derive backward from the learnings sought.”
• “...too many teachers focus on the teaching and not the learning.”
• Content focused design versus results focused design.
• Answering the "why?" and "so what?" questions as the focus of curriculum planning.
• Twin sins:
* activity-oriented design might be called "hands-on without being minds-on" primary-middle years)
* aimless coverage (upper secondary)
• Students require clear purposes and explicit performance goals.
•
Grasp the key idea that we are not coaches of their ability to play
the "game" or performing with understanding, not tellers of our
understanding to them on the sidelines.
•
Three stages of Backward Design = Identify desired result - Determine
acceptable evidence - Plan learning experience and instruction.
