UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN
Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe
Chapter 3
Gaining Clarity on Our Goals
“Teachers = Sinners?”
Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe
Chapter 3
Gaining Clarity on Our Goals
“Teachers = Sinners?”
I would like to start saying that “I believe in God” and that I regret from my sins that probably I have done before since I have realized from a new one: “the aimless content of my lessons”, i.e., there is no guiding intellectual purpose or clear priorities which frame the learning experience. Unfortunately, this is a big and common problem because we as teachers sometimes do not have enough time to prepare everything properly as we have to deal with “coverage” of all the contents meant to be developed through a school period previously established; therefore, we sometimes tend to use isolated activities with no clear aim on its contents or there is no intellectual purpose on it. For example, there is no intellectual purpose when we play games without planning them adequately, let’s say, “The Hangman”, the most useless or aimless one, as somebody mentioned once. However, that’s not an excuse to avoid correct planning for my lessons as a teacher. I have to ask questions and find the answers for them, such as “What is the point? What is the important big idea here? Why should the students learn this? When doing so, I can say that there is a clear purpose of my teaching activities or lessons. Therefore, it is relevant to consider that the remedy for this problem is to consider explicit big ideas as a guide for the teaching process and a concrete plan for ensuring the learning process. And obviously the most relevant aspect is to consider and perform the “Backward design”, which calls for us as teachers to make our goals or standards specific and concrete, in terms of assessment evidence, as we teachers begin to plan a unit or course.
Dear Angelina,
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that teachers are not famous for our organisation and structure and "Gaining Clarity on our Goals" is just a reminder of that. There is something in my mind since I read this chapter, we can work on big ideas, establish clear guidelines and specific goals according to our students's needs and their pace, yet those seem to be short term remedies. What happens with school policies, I can organise my class, but what if UTP does not foster "my curriclum update"?
I feel a bit discouraged...
Angelina:
ReplyDeleteIn order to analise what is appropriate or not regarding teaching understanding is very important to start making a distinction between teachers with vocation and teachers who are not concerned about improving education. Undoubtedly, teachers are the one who have the power to change the fate of education. However, in spite of the fact there are thousand of approaches or ways to improve it, if teachers are not willing to apply them, there is nothing to do. On the one hand, there are teachers who feel they are sinners because they have broken a law (fostering critical thinking or teaching big ideas in order to have autonomous students.) On the other hand, there are teachers who do not commit to improve education because they have not vocation.
Hi Angie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the time constrain that sometimes does not allow us to prepare the lessons we would like to.
After these two intense two years we have gone through, we are more prepared in terms of lesson planning and having more tool to perform better in the classrooms, having our goals clear about what we need to achieve at the end of the lessons. Maybe the classes we prepare are not the best ones in terms of activities, but if they have a clear aim, and students reach them, we achieve our goals. It is on us to perform well for the own good of our students.
Angelina,
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, backward design is the remedy for almost all our planning maladies. If our starting point are the final objectives we would like to achieve by the end of the unit or lesson, it will be much easier to have a coherent and succesful curriculum.
Honestly speaking, I have also come up with the self-critical feeling that I have had aimless lessons. Certainly, I have fufilled with the coginitive objectives, but this will result in long-term learning or the relevant transfer? Backward design can efectively solve this problem by introducing the big ideas and the essential questions which grant meaningfulness to our syllabus.
Last but not least, backward design also stresses the aspect of assessment which must be cristal-clear and transparent for students from the beginning.
The questions you've mentioned are very interesting and very simple at the same time.
ReplyDeleteBecause it is true that we hardly ever think about what is the point at doing certain activities? or Why should they learn this?
We simply prepare an activity related to the unit we are teaching and we don't have any time to analize anything.
However, now we are aware of this reality, we can do something to improve it, we can use everything we've learned to make a big change in our goals.
You are right when you mention that we have taken the wrong way in the application of our pedagogical practices, because they have been centered more in quantitative approach than in a quantitative one. It means that coverage is seen as a synonym of non paused work by teachers and the suitable way to assure the expected learning by the students. There is not doubt that this is a serious mistake made by most of us, due to the lack of clear goals proposed in the curriculum what leads to work separately in order to achieve them. This can be appreciated in the variety of results obtained by private schools and municipal ones what reflects the confusion and individualism in the current education system.
ReplyDeleteHi Angie!
ReplyDeleteI wonder the same about myself; Am I a sinner? The truth is that the more I know about TEFL the more guilty I feel, because then I realize that I haven't done things the way they were supposed be. And as someone said "ignorance is bliss". I don't like the way things work in education and I strongly believe action must be taken. Asking oneself those questions you posted is just the first step to change the state of things and the more people we get involved in this new way of doing things, the faster and cohesive the change will be. My dear friend, we are not sinners, we've just waken up from the Garden of Eden.
Dear,
ReplyDeleteit seems that the topic of our comments in general is to be a sinner. I don't know really whether we are, we might be. But the only thing you have to do is to consider all these deep concerns about understanding, essential questions, and devote time to think about how to carry out lessons, all this involved in the basic act of planning carefully and purposefully the lesson. I actually don't see any other solution other than commitment to redeem our sins.
claudio
My condolences my dear. After reading your post (which, I must confess, was the kick off for mine), I only could repeat 'forgive me father for I have sinned'. As Lorena said we are not famous for our organization, that is why we are not engineers. But we can do something. Perhaps, little by little we can aim to change our practices and if our efforts are fruiful we will see our students changing the way they think. We are lonely, we are a bunch of almost-extinct jedis of education, that is why UTP, Bosses and policy makers do not care about what we have studied these two years or what critical thinking and transferability are. So, we are isolated, and in isolation we will work. The good thing is nobody has more influence on the students that we have. Therefore, nobody from the outside will ever notice we are teaching differently, including overarching questions and putting aside the stimulus-reponse-teaching model that has tormented education for so long.
ReplyDeleteCheer up!