UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN

Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe

Chapter 1

Backward Design

"The book is properly thought of as a means to an Educational end, not an end itself"

As English teachers, how often have we designed our units around a particular text that we are teaching? This fact is evidenced by the language of the conversations we establish with our colleagues: "I'm in the middle of my Space unit right now, and I'm so delayed; what are you doing?" "I just started my unit on The Physical Description". Backward design shifts us, teachers, into thinking about theme-driven units as opposed to text-driven units, which is a crucial issue to think about. This also opens up a unit considerably so we can take a multi-genre approach and use a variety of texts to gain multiple perspectives on the questions associated with the theme. However, it is not that easy as it appears, because issues like these do not depend on us, on the contrary, they depend on "authorities' decisions" which unfortunately are not the best ones because "buisness are business". Nevertheless, this necessitates that we move away from a genre approach to teaching English toward a curriculum that focuses on the "big ideas and questions" that wil engage students and will help them to see the relevance of the study of EFL.

The backward design model centers on the idea that the design 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. the framework identifies three main stages:

1. Identify desired outcomes and results.
2. Determine what constitutes acceptable evidence of competency in the outcomes and results.
3. Plan instructional strategies and learning experiences that bring students to these competency levels.

As teachers we understand that feedback and assessment does not 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.

Criteria and Validity

UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN
Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe
Chapter 8
Criteria and Validity



“The criteria would specify the conditions that any performance must meet to be successful; they define, operationally, the task requirements”. (173)

If we try to articulate every piece of reading we have already read from this book, I can say that every word is closely linked and articulated in order to make my job as a teacher better. Now, my horizon is broader and clearer, full of understanding light. We must be completely clear about WHAT we are assessing and HOW we are assessing. And there lies a huge problem because unfortunately sometimes we mix learning goals with assessment methods and as a result, the criterion is mixed as well. I have to consider assessment as a means of getting valuable information to be used for improving the teaching and learning, and the criteria to be used when assessing must be as clear as possible in order to assess what is supposed to be assessed.

“We have to be sure that the performances we demand are appropriate to the particular understandings sought. Could a student perform well on the test without understanding? Could a student with understanding nonetheless forget or jumble together key facts? Yes and yes — it happens all the time. We want to avoid doubtful inferences when assessing any student work, but especially so when assessing for understanding”. (183)

In determining whether an assessment is truly valid evidence of a student’s understanding, the authors argue that we teachers should ask ourselves how likely it is that “a student could do well on this performance task, but really not demonstrate the understandings [we] are after” or whether “a student could perform poorly on this task, but still have significant understanding of the ideas and show them in other ways” (184). Therefore, when we conceive an instrument to measure understanding and a criterion to assess such instrument, we must assure that such work has been thought in depth, has been carried out thinking on the actual goals, and has considered the purposes set when planning the whole cycle (teaching/learning – assessing – interpretation of the results – teaching/learning).

“We are not born effective teachers, but we need to be effective from the start”