*Those who read this blog know that I read Grant Wiggins’s book Understanding by Design with chapters 1 , 2, and 3 already summarized. I prefer books to blogs by far as there is more substantial knowledge to derive from them, to question and analyze. Blogs are great in some ways but detrimental in others – too much personal input, beliefs, values, cultural context. Definitely enriching but at times I don’t really need that much, especially in the area of teaching where true thought leaders are hard to find. Most of today’s “innovative” ideas belong to the past, and I learned that in high school (more than 20 years ago) when I studied history of pedagogy.
Back to Wiggins.
I organized his ideas from Chapter 4 (The Six Facets of Understanding) in a chart that you can download. I think that schools do not engage students in many of the understanding processes showed below but mainly in the last three. We as “intellectuals” fail often to display understanding, too, which is why reading this book was also an exercise in self-reflection.
I will post later this summer on my “teaching” blog to show class examples of how I try to address each facet. I am privileged because I have been working in IB schools for the past 11 years and all of Wiggins’s (and Jay McTighe’s) ideas are embedded in the IB philosophy.
“The facets of understanding are different but related, in the same way that different criteria are used in judging the quality of performance.
Moments, Snippets, Spirals 