Schooling by Design

By Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/107018.aspx

Ashlee Giordano, Kristen Ekhoff, and Paul Weedling

We have bolded and symbolized with a “? –“ our questions for our classmates to ponder as they formulate their responses to this book review. Please do not feel pressured to answer all four of these in a single response; they are meant to be thought (and discussion) provoking questions, which may be separated from each other.

Chapter 5: What Is the Teacher’s Job When Teaching?

The mission of the teacher is to cause understanding of the curriculum. It is to develop “student understanding leading to genuine transfer performances, not simply knowledge acquisition.”

Teachers can take on three main roles in methodology: direct instructor, facilitator of understanding, or coach. Each of these yield different responses from the students; none of the three is better than the other, but only distinguished in the desired student response type and what style of teaching best fits the current curricula. The effective teacher uses all three methods appropriately at various times.

The authors took time to explore the role of the teacher as a facilitator more extensively. When the teacher is a facilitator, his/her role is to encourage students to continue questioning and responding within discussion, not to lead the discussions. The teacher in this role engages in Socratic questioning, guiding the students to construct meaning, but refraining from extensive direction and relinquishing control over the discussion. During Socratic questioning, a teacher can tell if the students realize there is a change in the classroom dynamic by watching where their eyes go after somebody makes a comment. Do they go to the teacher or to the student?

? - Do any of you have experiences like this, where the students stop looking to you as the teacher for direction and start looking to each other? We highly recommend looking at this article and scrolling down to Figure 5.1. This shows which methods of teaching lead to what type of student results. http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/107018/chapters/What_Is_the_Teacher%27s_Job_When_Teaching%2b.aspx

Wiggins and McTighe also explained the coaching role in greater detail. Some of the things they described a good coach doing were modeling goals, providing continuous feedback, and set high standards while helping students believe they can achieve those high standards. The effective coach also adjusts plans to meet even the unexpected needs of the moment. Coaching performance “seeks to support the learners' ability to transfer their learning to succeed in complex and autonomous performances. The teacher/coach establishes clear performance goals and then supervises the development of skills and habits through ongoing opportunities to perform, accompanied by specific feedback and modeling.” (Wiggins and McTighe)

The article mentions that there is no one correct way of teaching. Wiggins and McTighe give the following suggestions to assist in discerning when to use one method of teaching over another:
· “Emphasize facilitation when you seek conceptual understanding, the overcoming of misunderstandings, and student construction and testing of key ideas.
· Use coaching when you desire skilled, fluent, and self-disciplined transfer in performance, in response to feedback and advice.
· Offer direct instruction more on a “need to know” basis in light of clear performance goals and feedback from students' attempts to perform with their knowledge.”

Teachers sometimes lose sight of the mission of schooling by design. The authors suggest three common misconceptions teachers have about what their job consists of:
1. Thinking, “My job is to teach the content.”
2. Believing, “My job is to engage learners with interesting activities.”
3. Feeling, “My job is to teach to the test.”

? - Do you find yourself falling into any of these misdirected (but common) trains of thought? What surrounds those thought patterns? Can you find a common trigger in your experience? Do the majority of your coworkers seem to have a common misconception?

Chapter 8: How Should Backward Design Apply to School Reform?

As with accomplishing all goals in life, in education we must think and act strategically in order to effectively accomplish these goals. To plan backwards there are three stages to consider. In stage 1 the teacher needs to identify the desired result (what should students know). Stage 2 the teacher determines the acceptable evidence (assessment). Then in stage 3 the teacher can plan learning experiences and instruction that match stage 1 and 2. The authors suggest school reform has failed recently because “there has been no local, coherent, long-term strategy to plan effectively, validly select and coordinate tactics, and react quickly and decisively, mindful of strategy and goals.” The authors propose that the strategy (the broad plan) for successful school reform lies in everyone’s focus on understanding and transfer, and the tactics (the specific attacks to accomplish the plan) should all be in line with the purposes of that mission. Three nonnegotiable principles for successful reform include: “(1) plan backward from mission and program goals by carefully analyzing what mission demands, (2) confront and close the gap between the vision and reality, and (3) set in place from the start a plan to adjust the plan.”

? - Do you as teachers use the backward design method? What are some things you find difficult? What are some things that are successful? Have you seen a change from not using backward design to using backward design?

In applying backward design to school reform, we start with identifying the desired results. In this stage, the essential questions, knowledge, and skills the staff will have to confront along the way to achieving the goal are identified. In the second stage of determining the acceptable evidence, determination of how progress will be tracked and how adjustments will be made needs to be done. In the final stage of developing planned actions to achieve the goals, specifics of who will do what and what will be needed are answered. The designers (usually administrators) of the strategy, while going through backward design, must keep in mind that although players (teachers and staff) must know well and be able to put the plan into action, because deterrents and detours are bound to happen along the way, players must be empowered to thoughtfully improvise.

In developing and implementing a strategy for “closing the gap between vision and reality,” it is absolutely necessary that a plan of assessment be in place in order to accurately be able to adjust the strategy when needed. Two errors of way are warned against by the authors: (1) professional development is too often focused on activities to implement in our classrooms, but rarely followed up on or even connected to the long-term mission/goal of the school, and (2) teachers are told to do something in our classrooms, but not always given clear instructions for how to do so, nor held accountable for implementation.

? – Have you ever participated in a professional development opportunity that you believe to be a good example of one in which (1) the material was connected to the big picture of the mission of the school, (2) you were given all the tools and information necessary to implement the learning in your classroom, and (3) your administrators followed up on your implementation of your learning? Describe what it was and what made it a good example.