Understanding by Design

by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (ASCD, 2005)

Understanding as the Goal

Understanding by Design connects course or unit design to the goal of student understanding. Understanding includes the ability to explain, interpret, and apply knowledge, as well as having perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.

Thinking Like an Assessor

As in Creating Significant Learning Experiences, these authors advise designing lessons and activities only after learning goals and assessments are delineated, a process known as backward design. The chapter "Thinking like an Assessor" focuses on performance tasks that "reveal evidence" of understanding. In a hierarchy of assessment, authentic performance with purpose and audience sits at the highest level, while quizzes and tests can assess facts, concepts, and skills.

Essential Questions

In this framework, essential questions are used to organize units of study. They may be important questions that bridge classroom material and the real world; core questions that embody a discipline's ways of inquiry and knowing; pivotal questions tied to foundational vocabulary or skills; or simply engaging ones. The textbook Active Calculus begins each section with three or four questions that the section addresses. I find that format challenging; to take full advantage, students would need to be taught how to interact with questions whose answers they don't yet know.

The authors advise that questions be posed in student-centered language to make them engaging and provocative, and that students should understand the questions and see their value. That advice speaks directly to my concern: an essential question works only when students know what to do with it, so teaching students how to engage with open questions becomes part of the design itself.

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