Customer Reviews

Understanding by Design

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I first learned of this excellent book at a professional development workshop that was offered by my school. I was immediately driven to buy it and learn all that I could about the backwards design process. One year later I find myself planning ALL of my units around enduring understandings and essential questions. It really makes sense that students can demonstrate understanding in various ways, and that it is our duty as teachers to allow them to do that with as many opportunities as possible. This year I finally feel that my students are really connecting with what I want them to learn, and they are seeing the "big picture." I will never design a unit the "traditional" way again!

McTighe and Williams successfully expound on a subject often mired in philosophical debate: how to assess understanding and evaluate true learning. It is an outstanding framework for developing curriculum intent on extending beyond traditional methods of teaching and preaching to students. The authors contend that true understanding can be assessed by measuring performance against six facets of understanding: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. These facets are vital to developing curriculum and the authors do an outstanding job of presenting the material in charts, and exercises, making a difficult topic easier to understand. Comparing and contrasting covering material and uncovering knowledge serves to help teachers think like assessors, rather than activity planners. Helpful design tools are included throughout the book and teachers are instructed to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching with thoughtful and probing questions.

Understanding by Design will serve as my guide for evaluating my own effectiveness as a teacher. I expect to rely on it to gauge my own competency in developing and executing lessons. Examples throughout the book illuminating the practical applications of each of the six facets are well organized and easy to follow. I found the use of keywords and charts especially helpful in furthering my own understanding of how to uncover knowledge. I am confident that if I remain faithful to the tenets of this book, I will be able to put into practice what I believe constitutes effective strategies for learning: student-centered activities which call upon students to question assumptions, draw upon past knowledge, and advance understanding through incremental learning

This was the main textbook in my Curriculum and Instruction class, and it's okay, but VERY redundant. It says to start your lesson by deciding what you want your students to learn (well, duh!) and then don't let a bunch of nice-to-know-but-not-really-important facts get in the way (I guess that's what comes from the SOLs and stuff). And it hammers home the idea that students can LEARN something without really UNDERSTANDING it, which seems a little obvious to me.

All in all it's not a BAD book, but Id recommend something by Robert J. Marzano instead. We also used "Classroom Instruction that Works" in our class, and it was much better -- easier to read, not as boring or textbook-y, and more practical application type stuff.

I read this book for a master's class. At first it was hard to get into, but the material slowly dawned on me. By the time I finished the book, I can honestly say that it completely altered the way I write lesson plans. By using the backward design model, I can ensure lessons that don't waste time and really teach the concepts in the state standards. I would recommend this book to any serious teacher.

Wiggins and McTighe initial idea about preparing final assessments first and then working from there to structure activities and lessons isn't an all bad idea. There is something to be said for teaching to the material that is going to be tested. Unfortunately for this book, they didn't stop at that point. By trying to take the process one step further and discuss what it means to understand material, the authors have created a fundamental contradiction in the text that is never truly resolved.

The "backwards design" idea is a good idea, overall. Of course there is some danger in this idea too, given that it lends credence to those who think that education should be nothing more than teaching to a test, but overall, the authors have a valid point in that before teachers design activities, they ought to consider exactly what the end goal of those activities is going to be. Why teach everything about something, when there are only a couple of critical ideas that need to be addressed. By using this idea, the authors have addressed that depth in content coverage doesn't necessarily mean spending an entire semester on one idea, but rather by focusing on a couple of key points you can work to insure that a realistic understanding of the material is developed by the students.

This is where the authors should have stopped. Instead, the authors continue on to address a basic point in educational theory, that people learn and develop understanding when the material is something they are truly interested in. In many respects, the authors are bringing up the same point that Gardner addresses in his theory of Multiple Intelligences. Herein lies the basic problem of the text, by allowing students to gain an understanding of something they are interested in, there cannot be an end goal set by the teacher. If the teacher is setting an end goal, if there is a critical point that must be understand and all activities are pointed toward developing an understanding of that end goal, the student is no longer pursuing an end goal that is their own. They are instead pursuing the teacher's end goal.

Because of this inherent contradiction within the text, allow students to find the end goal that interests them the most, as long as that end goal is the same as the end goal set by the teacher, I cannot recommend this book as a means of modeling curriculum design. With the exception of identifying key objectives and understandings and working from there, the book largely creates a problem that is, at this point insurmountable.

This is a pretty good instructional design text. The model is not that revolutionary in instructional design, but for education used to older models of curriculum design, I imagine the ideas might be very revolutionary. It's a practical, usable book.