Grant Wiggins- Understanding by Design

Grant Wiggins – Understanding by Design
By: Peris Oribabor
Class: Curriculum Evaluation – Dr. Dugan
Summer 2009

Grant Wiggins is the President of an Educational consulting company called “Authentic Education” in Hopewell, New Jersey. He earned his PhD from Harvard University. Before that, he was a high school English and philosophy teacher and also coached sports. He is best known for co-authoring with Jay McTighe “Understanding by Design”, (1998) which was an award winning handbook because of its highly successful materials on curriculum. The “Understanding by Design handbook has laid out a conceptual framework for instructional designers and it has brought more focus and coherence to instruction. The framework is famously known for:
.
1. The “Backward Design” instructional design model
2. The “Six Facets of Understanding"

The Backward Design Model
It centers on the idea that the instructional 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. There are three stages in this backward design:

Stage 1 – Identifies desired outcome and results
This stage is known as defining goals and objectives. Wiggins and McTighe ask instructors to consider not only the course goals and objectives, but also the learning that should endure over the long term. This is referred to as enduring understanding. Enduring understandings is not just materials worth covering, but include the following elements:
1. Enduring value beyond the classroom
2. Resides at the core of the subject matter
3. Required uncoverage of abstract or often misunderstood ideas
4 Offer potential for engaging students

The “Backward Design” uses a question format rather than measurable objectives. By answering key questions, students deepen their learning about content and experience, which is enduring understanding. The teacher sets the evidence that will be used to determine that the students have understood the content. The “backward design” question format focuses on the following:
1. To what extent does the idea or topic is specifically related to the subject matter?
2. What questions point toward the big ideas and understanding?
3. What arguable questions deepen inquiry and discussion?
4. What questions provide a broader intellectual focus, in reference to the skill intended for the students to learn?



Once the key questions are identified, then focus or develop a few questions that apply the line of inquiry to a specific topic.

Stage 2 – Determines what constitutes acceptable evidence of competency in the outcome and results (assessment)
The second stage in the design process is to define:



1. How we will know if the students have achieved the desired results?
2. What is the evidence of students’ understanding and proficiency?
The backward design suggest that we think about a unit or a course in terms of the collected assessment evidence needed to document and validate that the desired learning has been achieved instead of simply covering a “content or a series learning activities”.

Assessment in "Understanding by Design"



1. Should be Performance task oriented; that means to be real world challenging in thoughtfulness with effective


use of knowledge and skill. Must be an authentic test of understanding in context
2. Criteria referenced Assessment (Quizzes, Tests and prompts). They provide the teachers and students with feedback on how well the facts and concepts are being understood.
3. Unprompted Assessment and Self-Assessment – this include Teacher’s observations as students work and interact with each other in a group project and in dialogues

Stage 3 - Plan instructional strategies and learning experiences that Bring students to these competency levels

With clearly identified results and appropriate evidence of understanding in mind, it is now the time to fully think through the most appropriate instructional activities. This can be accomplished by asking the following questions:
1. What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, principles) and skills (processes, procedures, strategies) will students need in order to perform effectively and archive the desired results?
2. What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills?
3. What need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught to reach the performance goal
4. What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals?

Six Steps in Assessing Understanding
Just because the student knows, does not mean that they understood the concepts being taught. Understanding provides a greater challenge than the evidence that the student knows a correct or a valid answer. Understanding can be inferred if we see the evidence that the student knows, “why it works”, “why it matters” and “how to apply” it. And therefore, Wiggins and McTighe (1998) recommends the following assessment steps which teachers can use to assess the students’ understanding:

1. Explain, connect and provide a thorough and justifiable account of phenomena, facts and data
2. Show its meaning, importance by telling meaningful stories or associating the concept with application in our everyday life. Provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make subject personal or accessible through images, analogies and models
3. Be able to apply and effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse context
4. Have a perspective or being able to see the big picture
5. Being able to see or perceive the value in what others might find as possible
6. Have self-knowledge to avoid misconceptions, biases, prejudices and other
projections and habits of mind that may impede our own understanding


Final Note
Instructional design requires that those involved in curriculum writing to think about specific learning which should be accomplished first. What do we want the students in a particular grade level to learn? What evidence should be used to determine that the students learned what was intended for them to learn? This should come first before thinking about what we as teachers will do or provide in teaching and learning activities.
Our lessons, units and courses materials should be inferred from the results sought, not derived from the methods, books and activities with which we are comfortable with. Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving specific results. Most teachers have a habit of focusing on textbooks, favorable lessons and time-honored activities rather than what is implied in the desired results – the output. Too many teachers focus on teaching and not in learning. They spend most of their time thinking about what they will do, what materials they will use, and what they will ask students to do rather than first considering what the learner will need in order to accomplish the learning goals beyond the textbook?
When a lesson has no meaning or frame of reference to a student, the day to day work at any given classroom become confusing and frustrating. In higher grades you find many students asking teachers such questions as: What’s the point? What does this help me become…? Why should we learn this? Some, but not all students try to engage and follow as best as they can, hoping that the meaning will emerge later.





Our Job as Teachers


1. Is not to Teach, but to cause Learning


2. Is not to cover content, but to ensure that the students can effectively perform with the content


3. Is not to Teach, Test, Hope for the Best, BUT to get the results that indicate that they got it.

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