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by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
Table of Contents
To first-time readers of Understanding by Design (UbD), we welcome you to a set of ideas and practices that may confirm much of what you believe and do as an educator. In one sense, all we have tried to do is pull together what best practice in the design of learning has always looked like. However, we predict that at least a few of our ideas may cause you to reflect on and perhaps rethink your own habits (or those of colleagues) related to planning, teaching, and assessing. For some readers, the material on the following pages may well “rock your world” and demand a vigorous rethinking of comfortable habits. Regardless of your entry point or degree of comfort as you read, we trust that the ideas of Understanding by Design will enhance your capacities in creating more engaging and effective learning, whether the student is a 3rd grader, a college freshman, or a faculty member.
Readers familiar with the first edition of Understanding by Design are forgiven for any puzzlement or angst they may feel upon looking over the Table of Contents of this second edition. We have overhauled the text from top to bottom, based on six years of constant research and development by the authors, our staffs, a dozen members of the ASCD-supported Training Cadre, and countless educators around the world. The resulting refinements will come as no surprise to those practitioners who have worked with us closely over the past six years. They always ask (with a mixture of laughter and dread): So, what changes have you made this time? The answer, in brief: We have revised the UbD Template, the key terms of UbD, dozens of worksheets, and some of the big ideas—a number of times—based on feedback from users, our own observations, and the deep desire to continuously improve.
We have worked with thousands of K–16 educators in all 50 states and 8 foreign countries since the first edition was written, and each time we work we get a new idea—a peril of the profession, alas, for those readers who crave a little more stability. Indeed, this is who we are. And, more important, this is what the work of teaching for understanding is all about: digging deeper, continually asking the essential questions, rethinking. So, although we apologize for sometimes making it difficult to follow our path, we make no apologies for practicing what we preach: We keep trying to better understand design and understanding.
As for a concrete list and explanation of the key changes in this second edition, here are the highlights:
We added the O for two reasons. This edition introduces a discussion of the big picture of design—curriculum frameworks—expressed in Understanding by Design terms. In the first edition, we discussed organization in a general way in terms of the history of the idea of a “spiral curriculum.” We also discussed it in terms of units as stories. But with greater clarity on our part about unit design and how units frame and are framed by courses and programs, it seemed necessary to distinguish unit flow from course and program flow. So the O enables us to usefully discuss sequence within units while considering separately sequence across units. And, if truth be told, the second reason is that we wanted the acronym to end in a letter that made it easier to remember, and O seemed just right—the design signifies “Whereto?” in our planning.
Readers at both ends of the K–16 spectrum will now find that their concerns are better reflected in the materials, with illustrations drawn from many workshops with faculty at all levels of schooling. Alas, it was simply impossible to include grade-specific and subject-specific examples for each idea; the text would be unreadable. So, although we have greatly expanded the examples, we ask readers to be open-minded and imaginative in their reading when the examples seem a bit far afield. Additional grade-specific or subject-specific examples appear on the subscription Web site that supports the work: http://ubdexchange.org
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