EDPL 6440 CurriculumUnderstanding by Designand Sleeter Powerpoint

The twin sins of traditional design

Activity Focused Teaching Coverage Focused Teaching

• Hands-on but not minds-on• Activities are fun and interesting but

do not lead anywhere intellectually

• Page by page• Within a pre-specified timeframe

• “…too many teachers focus on the teaching and not the learning. They spend most of their time thinking first about what they will do, what mateirals they will use, and what they will ask students to do rather than first consider what the learner willl need in order to accomplish the learning goals (p.15).”

UbD Saves the Day

Backward is Best!

Backward Design

3 Stages

Stage 1. Identify desired results– What should students know, understand, be able to

do?– What is worthy of understanding?– What enduring understandings are desired?– Consider content

standards, review curricular expectations, prioritize.

Stage 2. Determine Acceptable Evidence

– How will we know students have achieved our goals?– What counts as evidence of understanding and

proficiency?– What kinds of informal and

formal assessments will we use throughout the unit?

Stage 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction

– What will students need in order to perform effectively and achieve desired results?

– What activities will equip student with the needed knowledge and skills?

– What should be taught; coached?– What materials and resources will be used?

The Power of UbD

• Logic applies regardless of learning goals• Agreement on evidence leads to curricular coherence

Philosophy Free?

• “Understanding by Design is not a philosophy of education, nor does it require a belief in any single pedagogical system or approach.”

• “We offer guidance on how to tackle any educational design problem related to the goal of student understanding.”

• “Nowhere do we specify which ‘big ideas’ you should embrace.”

Philosophy Free?• The essence of the book is this: How do we

make it more likely—by our design—that more students really understand what they are asked to learn?

• “Although teaching for understanding is a vital aim of schooling, it is, of course only one of many. (Not all teaching can be geared to deep understanding; rote skill; mere familiarity can be ok.)

Philosophy Free?Are the targeted understandings:– Enduring, based on transferable, big ideas at the

heart of the discipline and in need of uncoverage?– Framed by questions that spark meaningful

connections, provoke genuine inquiry and deep thought, and encourage transfer?

Are the essential questions provocative, arguable, and likely to generate inquiry around the central ideas rather than a pat answer?

Considering UbD and Sleeter

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald "The Crack-Up" (1936)

“Multicultural curriculum fascinates me because it involves learning about diverse peoples and ideas through the lenses of immigrant and historically marginalized communities” (p.1).

Philosophy Rich• “… culturally relevant and intellectually rich

curriculum has the potential to improve student learning…”

• “…to the extent that curriculum reflects public knowledge and knowledge frameworks that young people learn, multicultural curriculum is a valuable resource for educating citizens for participation in a multicultural democracy.”

• Sleeter p.3

Philosophy Rich• Knowledge itself is embedded in social power

relations. Curriculum and who gets to define it, is political because knowledge in a multicultural democracy cannot be divorced from larger social struggles. It is a medium through which a society divorces itself and forms the consciousness of new generations.”

Sleeter, p.3

Designing curriculum Around Big Ideas

Sleeter – Chapter 3

Understanding by Design

• Backward Design• Starts with reflection on essential, enduring

understandings; what is worth teaching• Also think about what it looks like when

student ‘gets’ it ( Verbs, i.e. list vs. evaluate)• ‘Uncoverage’ not coverage

Coverage vs. Uncoverage

Content coverage entails delivering to students predigested content that someone else has thought through, wondered about, made sense of—the dots are connected; the student has to absorb

Uncoverage involves students inquiring into, around, underneath content instead of simply uncovering it—students connect the dots selected on the basis of the central ideas.

Identifying Big Ideas• Teachers’ difficulties identifying and elaborating on

central ideas around which to plan suggested that generally they have not been asked to plan curriculum in this way.

• Teachers are used to starting with materials in their textbook, then trying to make materials interesting to students instead of starting with what they wanted students to learn and then considering which resources to use.

• New teachers may not have internalized grade level curriculum enough to think about central ideas.

Analyzing Standards

• Teachers are most likely to identify underlying assumptions of standards documents when these are juxtaposed against alternatives in other documents ( gay/lesbian studies, woman’s studies, disability studies, postcolonial studies)

Analysis Questions• What is the main organizational structure of the

discipline as it is reflected in the standards document? (Is history portrayed as a story to learn or a process of inquiry—thinking like a historian? )

• What key themes do the standards embody? ( Voluntary immigration vs. involuntary immigration)

• What is indicated by a count of words, items, or socialcultural group membership.

Nonneutrality of Standards

• Standards-driven curriculum planning starts with the standards and draws big ideas directly from them. The standards become the main source of the curriculum.

• Standards-conscious planning uses the standards as a tool, but not the starting point and do not define the central organizing ideas and ideology of one’s curriculum.

The Task• Review 3-Page Nutrition Example (pp. 24-26)• Take the perspective of Sleeter and revise the unit. RyanStephanieTom

KittyPatrickLaura

PamelaNickCarl

HeidiCathyMark

Critics of Ubd

Theory Feasibility

• http://vidego.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=xa6k7lpo