Preface

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:

• The UbD Template for unit design now provides a structural foundation for the revised book. This prominence reflects not only the fact that the template has proven its practical benefit as a tool in design for understanding, but also our belief in its overarching value for cultivating better habits of planning.
• The UbD Template has been revised to be clearer and more user-friendly, we think, in its overall look and feel as well as its integration of form and content. The refinements occurred as a result of continuously reasking the following essential question: Does this proposed element involve what the final product should contain or is it only a process move leading to a better design? All the changes and refinements in the template stem from an affirmative answer to the first part of that question; the template represents a form for the final design, with elements aligned. (All of the key process moves, whereby designers are helped to think through the elements of design more clearly and carefully, are found as worksheets and design tools in the Understanding by Design Professional Development Workbook [McTighe & Wiggins, 2004]).
• We have greatly sharpened the meaning of understanding in conceptual, as well as practical, terms—an irony that nicely illustrates just what working for understanding is all about; that is, constantly rethinking the big ideas. We offer more specific guidelines on how to frame desired understandings (i.e., as full-sentence generalizations) and put much greater emphasis on the goal of transfer (because an essential indicator of understanding is the ability to transfer learning to new settings and challenges, as opposed to mere recall).
• We have laid out a much more careful argument about what essential questions are and are not. This turned out to involve more painstaking back-and-forths of drafts of Chapter 5 (Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding) than were necessary for any other part of the revision. Why? Because we saw an inconsistency between the original account and widespread practice. The argument can be framed by a set of essential questions: Must an essential question be timeless and overarching? Or can there be more specific essential questions for use in achieving unit goals? Does an essential question have to be philosophical and open-ended? Or can it—should it—point toward specific understandings? In short, what do (and what should) we mean by essential? Does it mean essential for living and thinking our whole lives, essential to the expert's view of things, or essential to successful teaching? People in the humanities tend to favor the first view; people in the sciences tend to favor the second view; people in elementary schools or teaching basic skill courses tend to favor the third view. Our ultimate answer: yes—all three! So the new chapter tries to bring more tidiness to an inherently untidy matter.
• We created the acronym WHERETO by adding TO to the original acronym WHERE in Stage 3 of the UbD Template. We did this to honor two ideas we knew to be important in instructional planning: differentiation (“Tailor” the work, as needed) and sequence (“Organization” of the activities for maximal impact). The addition of the T reflects not only common sense about a key challenge of instructional planning—personalizing the work for maximal effectiveness—but also an adjustment that grew out of a two-year research project whereby we asked thousands of educators to identify specific exemplary designs and the characteristics these exemplars all had in common. (The exercises and results are described in Chapter 9.)

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.

• We deleted or minimized sections on teaching for understanding (and the habits of mind required), having decided this topic was outside the scope of the book. Our purpose has always been to discuss the key elements of the goal of understanding and how to design for it. Teaching for understanding (including preparing students, parents, and staff for a shift in emphasis) requires its own separate and thorough treatment. In our view, some of the later chapters in the first edition no longer seemed to fit with that sharpened sense of purpose.
• We have included more examples, across grade levels and subject, to reflect the happy fact that the book has become widely used by elementary school staff and college professors, two groups that were not initially included in the target audience. The original book was written primarily for an audience working from the upper elementary grades through high school (grades 4–12), as the examples and text suggested. (In retrospect, our caution in limiting the audience seems silly. We thought that a focus on “design for understanding” would have great resonance only in the upper grades of the K–12 system, and we had not yet worked enough with college faculty to generate good examples.) Yet, despite the limitations of the original examples, to our delight the arguments seem to have spoken to educators at all levels.

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