Riassunto esame Design of Education Environments, prof. Santi, libro consigliato Understanding by Design - expanded 2nd edition, Wiggins, McTighe

BACKWARD DESIGN IN ACTION WITH BOB JAMES

Bob is a 6th grade teacher at Newton Middle School and begins planning a three-week unit on nutrition. New to the field of UdB, his project will develop and be revisited over time. STEP 1: IDENTIFYING THE DESIRED RESULTS The model asks to highlight the unit's objectives (state standards must be drawn on). With regard to nutrition, the standards need to be revised. The author found 3 content standards on nutrition that refer to this age level: - Students will understand the essential concepts of nutrition - Students will understand the elements of a balanced diet. - Students will understand their own fed patterns and the ways in which these patterns can be improved. Bob has always focused on knowledge and skill: knowledge of the food pyramid, the ability to read labels in the shop and at home, etc. His intention is to focus his teaching and limited class time on the really important aspects of this unit, namely understanding the elements of good nutrition.so that students can plan a balanced diet and menu for themselves and others. The important questions to ask the students will be "so what is good for you? What is not? How do you know? What makes it difficult to know and eat well?" But Bob will have to reflect further on what understanding is in this context. There is something about the unit that requires in-depth discovery. In fact, the teacher has discovered that many students have two misconceptions: if food is good for you, it must taste bad; if it is sold in famous and popular places, it must be good. Bob's aim is therefore to dispel these myths so that students do not have an automatic aversion to healthy food and unwittingly eat too many unhealthy things. STEP 2. DETERMINING ACCEPTABLE EVIDENCE Typically, in a three or four week unit such as this, Professor James has the students do a quiz or project which he then grades. This approach makes the assessment fairly simple and straightforward but does not reflect the purpose.of the unit and the grade does not relate to the key ideas. Pupils, too, tend to focus more on the grade rather than on their learning. After reviewing some examples of performance tasks and discussing with colleagues, BJ decided to assign a different task: since we have learned something about nutrition [...] in view of the three-day trip, propose a menu, following the guidelines of the food pyramid and the nutritional facts on food labels, consisting of three meals and three snacks. Your aim: a tasty and nutritionally balanced menu. This assignment and project allow the teacher to assess with a quiz the students' knowledge of food groups and food pyramid recommendations, and with a longer test their understanding of how a nutritionally deficient diet contributes to health problems. STEP 3. PLANNING LEARNING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATION Choice of activities to be done during the unit and the material resources they will need to carry them out. For BJ pupils will need to know the different food

This draft nutritional unit reveals four key aspects of backward design:

1. Assessments, performance tasks and related sources of evidence
2. Groups and the types of foods found in each group
3. The human nutritional values of carbohydrates, proteins, sugar etc.
4. The minimum daily requirements of these elements

The problems that result from poor nutrition. In terms of skills, reading and interpreting labels.

Regarding learning, different resources will be used (booklets, videos, a nutritionist from the hospital...). The teaching method will be a mix of direct instruction, inductive, group and individual work. Planning backwards to produce this draft was useful for the teacher. In this way, it is possible to see and state more clearly what knowledge and skills are essential, given the objectives for the unit. It is possible to focus on the important aspects of the topic. In terms of assessment, on the other hand, it is now possible for BJ to know what he has to assess.

COMMENTS ON THE DESIGN PROCESS

1. Teaching is designed as a performance enabler, with lessons being developed after the design process. 2. Family activities and projects will be modified based on the evidence needed to assess targeted standards. 3. Teaching methods and resource materials are chosen with the goal of helping students meet the standards. 4. The role of the textbook can shift from being a primary resource to a support. BJ will refine his unit plan as he gains a greater understanding of understanding, essential questions, valid assessment, and related learning activities. A PREVIEW key elements of the UdB approach and then an outline of the points that will be touched upon in the book. In summary, backward design produces greater coherence between desired outcomes, key performances, and teaching and learning experiences, resulting in better student performance - the purpose of design.

CHAPTER 2: UNDERSTANDING Understanding. Bob James was

confused about 'understanding', but it turns out to be a fairly common problem. What is the difference between knowledge and understanding? And so we come to a question that turns out to be essential: how well do we understand understanding? What are we looking for when we say we want students to understand this or that? These conceptual uncertainties are present in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Benjamin Bloom Domain, 1956, and colleagues classify and clear the range of possible intellectual goals, from cognitively easy to difficult, i.e. classifying degrees of understanding. In the introduction, the authors refer to comprehension as a commonly sought after but ill-defined goal: For example, some teachers believe that their students should "really understand", others want their students to "internalise knowledge", still others want their students to "grasp the core or essence". The idea of understanding is certainly distinct from the

Idea of knowing something. Fifty years later, the California State Standards in Science specified understandings separate from knowledge. Understanding is a mental construct, an abstraction made by the human mind to make sense of many distinct pieces of knowledge. The standard also suggests that if students understand, then they can provide evidence of that understanding by demonstrating that they know and can do certain specific things.

UNDERSTANDING AS MEANINGFUL INFERENCES

How are understanding and knowledge related? Making matters worse is our tendency to use terms such as know, know how and understand interchangeably in everyday speech. Aware of this tendency, a conceptual distinction needs to be made to safeguard (in speech) the difference between knowledge and understanding.

KNOWLEDGE

• The facts
• A body of coherent facts
• Verifiable claims
• Right or wrong

UNDERSTANDING

• The meaning of facts
• The theory that provides coherence and meaning to those facts
• Fallacious

theories and work in progress

• I know something is true A question of degree or sophistication
• I respond on command with what I say I understand why this is so, what makes knowledge
• I judge when to use and when not to use what I

John Dewey (1933) summarised the idea most clearly in How We Think.

EXAMPLE the words on the page are the 'facts' of a story. We can look up any word in the dictionary and say we know it. But the meaning of the story remains open to discussion and argument. The 'facts' of any story are the agreed details; understanding the story is what we mean by the phrase 'reading between the lines'. In the words of Bloom (1956), understanding is the ability to put skills and facts together wisely and appropriately, through effective application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

UNDERSTANDING AS TRANSFERABILITY

Understanding is about transfer:

being truly capable requires the ability to transfer what we have learnt into new and sometimes confusing contexts. Effective transfer of our knowledge and skills involves the ability to take what we know and use it creatively, flexibly, fluently on our own. Transfer is the key to a good education. It is an essential skill because teachers can only help students to learn a relatively small number of ideas, examples, facts and skills across the whole field of study. To go beyond just learning and recall, we need to be taught and assessed on the ability to see patterns. This requires education in how to solve problems using big ideas and transferable strategies, not simply how to input specific facts or formulas. Big ideas are essential because they provide the basis for transfer. In academia, one has to learn to transfer knowledge and intellectual skills. This is an old idea framed by Whitehead (1929) almost.100 years ago in his denunciation of 'inert in education ideas that are simply received into the mind without being used or tested or thrown into new combinations. Transfer is the essence of what Bloom and his colleagues meant by application. The challenge is not to 'fit' what has been learnt by heart, but to modify, adjust and adapt an idea to the particulars of a situation. Knowledge and skill, therefore, are necessary elements of understanding, but not sufficient in themselves. Understanding requires more: reflective and active work, the ability to self-assess and critique doing. UNDERSTANDING AS A NOUN

The word has both a verb and a noun meaning. Understanding a topic or subject means being able to use (or apply) knowledge and skills wisely and effectively. An understanding is the successful result of trying to understand - the resulting comprehension of an unknown idea. Authentic understanding implies another kind of transfer. We go beyond what we see, using big ideas.

To give it meaning. The challenge is to make it more likely by design rather than by luck or natural disposition on the part of the children. Without designed lessons, some of life's ideas remain empty phrases to be memorised, depriving students of the knowledge that ideas have power. As the authors of How People Learn note, understanding fundamental principles and ideas seems to be the main route to adequate transfer of education. Therefore:

• Transfer must be the aim of all teaching in the school.
• "is our great and difficult mission- "goes in the opposite direction to 'new' knowledge an education in understanding asks us to look more closely at prior knowledge and the assumptions on the basis of which we claim that something is known".

THE EXPERT'S BLIND SPOT

Understanding the importance of transfer is helpful in making sense of all those educators, like Bruner, who claim that typical cover