Essential Questions

1. What does Understanding by Design suggest about school and district curricula that promote high levels of achievement for all students?
2. How can Understanding by Design provide a set of design principles for educators working with curriculum design, development, and implementation?
3. How can Understanding by Design be integrated into the curriculum auditing and renewal process?

Although Understanding by Design (UbD), as first presented in Wiggins and McTighe's 1998 book, focuses primarily on unit development, many of the most successful school and district adoptions of the UbD framework have gone beyond teacher-designed units. Those exemplary schools and districts have begun to use the principles of UbD to restructure their overall system of curriculum management. In this chapter, school and district curriculum leaders, working closely with teachers and administrators trained in UbD, explain how they have used the UbD framework to expand staff understanding of curriculum as a management system to promote continuous improvement. They also describe the challenges and potential pitfalls of integrating the UbD framework into school and district curriculum work in an age of test-driven accountability.

This chapter also examines curriculum work from schools and districts throughout the United States, emphasizing the following: (1) descriptions of how schools and districts have used UbD to promote staff and student understanding of content and performance standards; (2) examples of how schools and districts have integrated enduring understandings and essential questions into their curriculum frameworks and guides; (3) a discussion of how UbD's three-circle audit process can help schools and districts identify core enabling knowledge (i.e., what all students should know and be able to do); and (4) an exploration of how schools and districts are using UbD to promote a seamless relationship among curriculum standards, assessment, and instruction in core content areas. The chapter concludes with an organizational assessment that curriculum specialists can use to support an audit and revision of their curriculum.

The ideas and recommendations from high-level users of UbD concerning the framework's relationship to curriculum design, development, and implementation center on these core issues:

• A growing awareness that curriculum is a system for managing learning, not just for collecting documents or road maps for instruction. As part of this effort, we need to ensure that all staff members, including administrators and teachers, understand and address the concept of continuous improvement.
• The need for schools and districts to build consensus among all stakeholders about what content standards actually mean. That is, staff members must agree about what all students are expected to know and be able to do, as well as what they should understand.
• The value of integrating enduring understandings and essential questions into curriculum publications, including standards documents and related scope and sequence frameworks.
• The profound need to make the curriculum time-appropriate and realistic, auditing it to ensure that staff members have adequate time to teach for deep conceptual understanding, not just for superficial coverage.
• The potential power of the curriculum to reflect and model a range of assessment tools—what Wiggins and McTighe (1998) refer to as a photo album approach to assessment and evaluation. This helps a learning organization overcome an institutional reliance on selected-response testing as an exclusive way to monitor student performance and to determine organizational effectiveness.
• The opportunity that a well-designed curriculum provides to reinforce instructional practices that promote high levels of understanding and overall achievement for all students, including those in special populations (gifted and talented, special education, ESL, and the socioeconomically disadvantaged).

Patty Isabel Cortez, an English language arts coach at Morris High School in the Bronx, New York City, describes the power of Understanding by Design as a curriculum design process:

UbD has often been referred to as “backward planning.” It really is so much more than that. We are used to thinking about what we want our students to achieve and where we want them to be. Most of our effective teachers are already “backward planners.” What is different about UbD? A [UbD] unit involves three stages: identify the desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning experiences and instruction. Understandings are often referred to as the “big ideas.” These big ideas, or understandings, are statements that are provocative and are worded so that students may engage in meaningful discussions.

Like Cortez, many other high-level users reinforce the significance of UbD as a catalyst for transforming the curriculum as a tool to engage student ownership of what they are learning and to enhance their conceptual insights into the content they are studying.

Curriculum as a System for Managing Learning

One of the most significant findings in this study of high-level users was their universal agreement that the UbD framework offers a model for curriculum design, development, and implementation. Those practitioners agree that UbD synthesizes principles and strategies for continuous improvement in a school or a district. In effect, educators can use UbD as a tool to build consensus about the meaning of school and district standards, the implications of those standards on student learning, the ways to monitor and evaluate all students' progress in mastering those standards, and the instructional interventions needed to promote maximum student achievement and organizational effectiveness.

David Malone, senior vice president of Quality Learning in Missouri City, Texas, stresses that “UbD is a catalyst for change that clearly, [according to] research, offers a solution for more effective instructional planning. It is extremely powerful when wrapped in a total solution for school reform.”

Similarly, Joseph Corriero, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in Cranford, New Jersey, reaffirms the value of UbD as a catalyst for unifying staff members' work with all phases of the curriculum development process:

We have created a curriculum design template that reflects UbD principles. Teachers involved in writing curriculum are provided with additional training in Understanding by Design work. Teachers work with an outside consultant to design units of study that combine UbD with problem-based learning strategies.

What, then, would a school or a district look like if it approached its curriculum work using UbD principles to promote continuous improvement? High-level users agree on the following universal elements:

• Professional development for all staff members in the process of a curriculum audit using the three-circle audit process presented by Wiggins and McTighe (1998) and the three stages of backward design.
• Consensus building about the meaning of school and district standards for content and the standards' implications for what all students should know, do, and understand.
• Creation of exemplary curriculum materials that are field-tested and have proven effective in promoting high levels of student understanding.
• Integration of a range of assessment tools to monitor all students' progress in mastering identified standards.
• Feedback and coaching for all instructional personnel concerning their use of instructional strategies to promote high levels of student understanding and overall achievement relative to school and district standards.

According to high-level users, the process of helping a school or a district use UbD as a catalyst for continuous improvement involves a major commitment to consensus building and professional development. For example, Carl Zon, a standards and assessment coach and educational consultant in Sunnyvale, California, asserts that “the UbD-related work is intended to provide a common design framework for collaborative work by district teachers and administrators.”

Similarly, Lynne Meara, supervisor of instruction and gifted and talented coordinator for the Plumsted Township School District in New Egypt, New Jersey, emphasizes that commitment:

[A]ll members of the staff have been trained or will participate in ongoing UbD instruction. The process has also been added to our differentiated supervision model in developing action research opportunities to develop more units using the process or exploring improvement possibilities for existing ones.

The big idea of curriculum as a system for managing learning entails educators' commitment to transforming curriculum into an organic process for promoting learning for all students. High-level users of UbD suggest that this approach must include the following components:

• Staff members' recognition that a curriculum is not simply written documents, but a living, breathing system for managing student progress.
• Consensus-driven determination of what mandated content standards suggest about what all students should know, do, and understand, with accompanying performance standards that articulate what students should demonstrate in terms of proficiency and competence at key points in their education, which would be ideally organized by grading or reporting periods.
• Integration of big ideas (including enduring understandings and essential questions) into both the design of curriculum standards and the evaluation of students' growing understanding of those standards.
• School- and district-sanctioned support of and commitment to using a range of assessment tools that include, but are not limited to, school-, district-, or state-mandated accountability tests (including constructed-response tests and quizzes; academic prompts that clearly specify format, audience, topic, and purpose; reflective assessment activities; and culminating performance-based projects).
• Learning environments that involve a continual connection between assessment and teaching, with the educator (1) monitoring all students' growing mastery of intended curricular outcomes and (2) modifying instruction to address individual strengths and needs.
• An overall school or district commitment to developing schools as learning organizations, with all stakeholders working together to promote maximum student understanding and achievement in relation to consensus-driven standards.

Building Consensus About Standards and Their Meaning

What, then, can we learn from high-level users about the issues relating to standards, and how can we best address those issues? Frank Champine, a social studies lead teacher (K-12) with the Neshaminy School District Department of Curriculum and Instruction in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, suggests that

UbD represents a model for school reform at the most elemental level of a district. It gives teachers and administrators clear and simple guides on improving curriculum, instruction, and assessment. It enables teachers to analyze state and national standards in a meaningful way, and it gives individual teachers [or] practitioners an opportunity to control their professional lives.

All high-level users who participated in the study acknowledge that effective standards implementation has involved a process of consensus building and professional development. Angela Ryan, an instructional facilitator in Hershey, Pennsylvania, summarizes this process:

The questions we ask during curriculum facilitation follow the UbD process. Whether we are designing standards/benchmarks/objectives, instructional strategies, or assessments, this is our process. It becomes our mantra.

Expert practitioners agree that a commitment to sustained professional discourse is essential to unpacking standards. Champine affirms that idea:

[UbD promotes] professional dialogue on critical elements of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. It forces teachers to share what is really important and how to teach it. The discussions that evolve from our training sessions are amazing. That dialogue brings people on board, and I see significant change in the instructional and assessment components of our teaching.

High-level users almost universally agree that work with school and district standards is both difficult and, at times, clouded by misunderstandings and misperceptions about the best ways to prepare students for high-stakes accountability testing. According to most interviewees, educators frequently misperceive test preparation efforts as a teach-to-the-test procedure; teachers directly coach students to be familiar with test design when “covering” content that may be on a particular state test. Understanding by Design, interviewees agree, reflects research-based best practices proven to help teachers transcend drill-and-kill approaches to test preparation with strategies that reflect five key principles:

1. Effective curriculum management systems require that curriculum standards be appropriate and reasonable for available time resources. Schools and districts can use the three-circle audit process (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) to evaluate what is worth just being familiar with versus what is both essential and enduring.
2. Standards cannot be taught directly without consensus about their meanings. Educators must work together to determine what content standards suggest about what all students should know (i.e., core declarative knowledge, such as key facts, concepts, generalizations, rules, principles, and laws); should be able to do (i.e., core procedural knowledge, such as skills, procedures, and processes); and should understand at a particular point in their education.
3. Effective schools and districts integrate conceptual understanding directly into the design of curriculum frameworks. Most high-level users reinforce the need to have enduring understandings and essential questions implied by school and district standards identified directly as part of core framework documents, including scope and sequence charts.
4. Curriculum documents must contain exemplars and benchmarks that model research-based best practices to promote student achievement and mastery of standards. This process should include assessments that reflect examples of accountability test design, as well as assessment prototypes that reflect a genuinely balanced approach to monitoring students' mastery of standards. Once again, practitioners acknowledge the value of Wiggins and McTighe's photo album approach, which replaces the limitations of assessment snapshots.
5. Instructional activities and design elements in effective curricula should reinforce staff members' use of research-based best practices. High-level users stress repeatedly the commonsense clarity of the WHERETO model for instructional design (see Chapter 1, page 19), which highlights instructional principles consistent with standards-based teaching and learning.

Integrating Big Ideas into the Curriculum Design Process

High-level users strongly agree about the need for schools and districts to overcome atomistic approaches to curriculum design. Students learn best when they can see the big picture in the content that they are studying, including recurrent themes, concepts, principles, and questions that need revisiting over the course of their education. When students are taught isolated or discrete pieces of information, high-level users concur, learning is minimized; in contrast, when students are taught using a conceptual approach that emphasizes understanding, levels of achievement for all students greatly increase.

The process of integrating big ideas into curriculum design emerges as a major aspect of practitioners' discussion of UbD and its effect on curriculum within their respective schools and districts. Deborah Jo Alberti, assistant director of special and gifted education services for the Norfolk Public Schools in Norfolk, Virginia, stresses that a major contribution of UbD has been that “the understandings and essential questions became part of the school division's curriculum guides.” The Norfolk Public School District experimented with integrating enduring understandings and essential questions into all content areas assessed by the Virginia Standards of Learning accountability program.

Other school districts throughout the United States are approaching the integration of big ideas into their curriculum documents through a process of consensus building, coaching, and professional development. Dorothy C. Katauskas, assistant to the superintendent for curriculum, instruction, and staff development (K-12) in the New Hope-Solebury School District, New Hope, Pennsylvania, describes her system's approach as one that includes all key stakeholders:

The most significant [effect of Understanding by Design] is probably the district's model for course outlines and curriculum maps. . . . We are mapping all curricula with the enduring understandings and essential questions as key component[s]. [Our] UbD Implementation Committee was inaugurated this year to study the change in culture as it relates to using UbD at the teacher, learner, and classroom environment level. That committee has Board [of Education] representation, as well as teachers and administrators.

High-level UbD users suggest that, in an ideal system of curriculum management, standards-driven understandings would be a fundamental part of curriculum design as follows:

• Enduring understandings (i.e., statements of understanding that articulate the big ideas and deep conceptual understandings at the heart of each content area) would be identified in all curriculum guides, with an emphasis on conceptual statements that students would revisit across grade levels.
• Essential questions (i.e., open-ended, interpretive questions that go to the heart of a discipline or content area) would give teachers and students cues about how to inquire into the essential meanings and understandings that form the infrastructure of the content that they are teaching and learning.
• Enabling knowledge objectives (i.e., objectives derived from content standards to articulate specifically what students at a particular grade or within a particular reporting period should know and be able to do) would emphasize student understanding through behavioral verbs aligned with one or more of the six facets of understanding (explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge).
• Those big ideas would guide and inform assessment and instructional decision making and would cue both teachers and students into what is universal or essential about the curriculum that they are exploring together.

Judith Hilton, a UbD cadre member and university professor from Greenwood Village, Colorado, describes the benefits of this particular curriculum component:

[As a result of Understanding by Design,] teachers more deliberately unpack the content standards and align the topic to the standards. I see teachers teach more to what students should learn than the fact [or] skill orientation. They are improving in developing a comprehensive assessment plan and looking at evidence of performance over time. It is interesting to see what happens as teachers struggle to shift the paradigm to teach conceptually. When they do that pretty well, the daily plans become a struggle, so I find it necessary to spend more time on Stage Three than I logically expect, [because] daily instruction is most teachers' strength. The big idea sinks in when they get student work, particularly [work that is] better than they have [seen] in the past. That is when they fall in love with the idea.

Overcoming Time Constraints Through Curriculum Auditing

Educators everywhere decry the absence of realistic time resources in the face of mounting calls for accountability in their schools and districts. Therefore, it is no surprise that many high-level UbD users reinforce the need for educators to revisit their curriculum to ensure that it presents a realistic course of study within available time constraints. Many practitioners also testify to the value of the three-circle audit process described by Wiggins and McTighe at the beginning of Understanding by Design (1998). Specifically, the authors recommend that, as educators work together to unpack standards and implement required curricula, they ask themselves three key design questions:

1. For each of our required standards, what is worth just being familiar with? That is, what can we teach relatively superficially, or what can we eliminate from our instruction when we are confronted with time constraints?
2. If we examine each of our standards, what should all students know (i.e., core declarative knowledge) and be able to do (i.e., core procedural knowledge)?
3. In light of what we agree all students should know and be able to do, what are the implied enduring understandings and essential questions that they should explore and about which they should demonstrate growing proficiency and competence?

Ryan of Pennsylvania asserts that

[Understanding by Design] is a proven way to make sense of what one is teaching. It helps with the efficiency of time for instruction in the classroom. You take the students where you want to go . . . educationally. As a teacher, I become forced to design and [to] plan the deeper understandings. I recognized through UbD how to get students where I wanted them to go by design—and not by chance.

Linda Marion, a staff development resource teacher from Chula Vista, California, describes a similar process and benefit:

Having teachers stop and think about what the enduring understandings were (what did they want their students to remember and use years from now), [determine] acceptable evidence (valid and reliable) that the students [had] gained the understanding, and [sift and sort] through their repertoire of activities and lessons was quite a paradigm shift in and of itself. Teachers were thinking about what they were teaching. They were evaluating each and every assignment and assessment to ensure validity. Teachers were letting go of time-honored and favorite lessons and activities that were not aligned to the desired results. This was BIG, really BIG!

Interviewees confirm that true progress in promoting achievement for all students, including those identified as special populations, requires schools and districts to eliminate the “mile-wide, inch-deep” curriculum and to replace it with one that allows genuine teaching for understanding within a progress continuum. Educators must have the time and resources to promote understanding for all, not just for a select or highly able few.

Curriculum as a Platform for Research-Based Best Practices

I see UbD as a way of thinking about design. It is not a prescriptive program that gets put on a shelf. It becomes a series of questions that [educators] ask themselves when they think about design of curriculum [or] instruction at any level. I also see it as a powerful way to put the responsibility for learning back in the students' hands. It allows students to become active and not passive members of the learning community. And it gives teachers a way to become more of a facilitator and a coach. It helps teachers focus on their students and what is right for their students. I wish that I had worked this way when I was a classroom teacher.

This reflection from Elizabeth Rossini of Fairfax, Virginia, one of the UbD cadre members interviewed for this study, reinforces another highly consistent theme among high-level users: the need for a viable system of curriculum management that identifies, reinforces, and models the research-based best practices in all curriculum materials and related resources. As Elliott Seif, a UbD cadre member and a former curriculum and staff director in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, suggests, “The best model is when curriculum matches UbD principles, or [teachers] have worked with their supervisory model to integrate UbD indicators into instructional supervision.”

Janie Smith, a UbD cadre member and former curriculum director in Alexandria, Virginia, affirms

[Understanding by Design] works in effectively improving the planning process and focusing on desired results [through] the backward design approach. Many teachers don't plan using a unit approach, but focus on daily lessons and “coverage or activities.” UbD proves less can be more when it comes to in-depth understandings, retention, and transfer of learning to new and varied situations. Performance assessment training is also a strength.

Katauskas of Pennsylvania emphasizes another recurrent theme in the study: the need for collaboration and consensus building in a systemwide process of effective curriculum management:

[Our UbD Implementation] Committee is . . . developing a model similar to the well-known “Walk Through” model of school study, but it will solely focus on UbD as a data collection model from both the qualitative and quantitative point of view. These forums will be opportunities for internal staff to review indicators of understanding that we are developing by interviewing teachers and students, as well as [by] viewing the classroom environment. Then the teams will discuss their observations with the teachers in a feedback model [using] the action research strategy. We would like to eventually open the forums to other UbD district visitors who would understand the indicators and provide external feedback also.

Expert practitioners underscore the value of UbD's WHERETO template (see Chapter 1, page 19) as a clear, accessible, and powerful synthesis of what we now know about the teaching and learning process. It is necessary, they suggest, to apply the WHERETO components to all aspects of curriculum design, development, and implementation. In particular, they agree that WHERETO reinforces such key principles as continuous improvement (i.e., using a sustained feedback-adjustment system to identify students' strengths and needs and design instruction to accommodate them); differentiation (i.e., personalizing the teaching-learning environment based on students' interests, goals, academic performance, and achievement gaps); and academic rigor (i.e., ensuring that all learners receive an understanding-based education reflecting the values of excellence and equity). At the same time, survey participants are concerned about the complexity and challenges of putting these principles and processes into action in light of the high-stakes accountability testing many public schools and districts now face. In fact, many participants decried the proliferation of misconceptions and misunderstandings about how to best promote high levels of performance on such tests (i.e., mechanical drill-and-kill test preparation focusing on discrete curriculum elements presented in isolation vs. conceptually-organized teaching and learning based on inquiry into the big ideas, concepts, and essential questions underlying content areas).

* * *

As you consider what this chapter has suggested about UbD and curriculum as a system for managing learning, you may wish to use the following end-of-chapter resources to guide staff exploration, particularly study group inquiry.

Figure 2.1 synthesizes the major themes and big ideas from this chapter as a tool for exploring curriculum reform. Figure 2.2 provides an organizational assessment matrix summarizing the universal design principles that can be abstracted from UbD and applied to evaluating any system of curriculum management. Once again, the power of the UbD framework is its universality and its ability to guide and to inform dialogue about educational renewal efforts, whether or not staff members have participated in formal training or unit development that covers Understanding by Design.

Figure 2.1. Recommended Curriculum Design Principles

Curriculum should be viewed as a system for managing student learning, not as a series of documents. Curriculum must be elegant and realistic for time and resource constraints within the school and district. The three-circle audit process supports this approach by encouraging teachers to determine what is worth being familiar with (i.e., content that can be covered superficially or given abbreviated attention, if necessary), what all students should know and be able to do, and what all students should understand at a deep conceptual level. State and district standards should form the basis for framing all major curriculum questions. Curriculum is the tool through which learning organizations unpack standards, a process that requires consensus building and interpretation. Educators may not immediately interpret or understand standards in the same way. Effective curriculum requires that key framework documents (e.g., scope and sequence charts) articulate not only content standards (i.e., what all students should know and be able to do), but also big ideas, enduring understandings, and essential questions. Curriculum should be organized conceptually; universal elements should form the infrastructure for curriculum programs, subjects, courses, and units. Conceptual organization of curriculum requires that designers and developers achieve consensus regarding horizontal elements (i.e., what should be taught within a particular time period); vertical elements (i.e., how various time periods and grades interrelate); and spiral elements (i.e., big ideas, essential questions, and enabling knowledge objectives that are to be revisited across time periods and content areas). High-impact curriculum models show teachers how to address content standards, big ideas, and recurrent universal questions so that all students learn them at increasing levels of conceptual understanding. To promote continuous improvement, curriculum must demonstrate how teachers can use a range of assessment tools (i.e., tests and quizzes with constructed-response items, reflective assessments, academic prompts, and culminating projects) to monitor student achievement and adjust instruction to accommodate emerging strengths or needs. Curriculum guides should reflect research-based best practices that embody the following principles: Ensure that all students know where they are going and why. Incorporate warm-up activities that establish purpose, evince authenticity, and encourage student ownership. Allow students to explore big ideas and essential questions. Encourage students to be self-reflective and self-evaluative. Reinforce students' capacity for self-monitoring, self-assessment, and self-presentation. Use differentiated instruction to address all learners' needs. Move students from concrete experience to deep conceptual understanding.

Figure 2.2. Organizational Assessment: Curriculum Design and Development Principles That Promote Understanding for All

To what extent does curriculum in your school or district reflect each of the following indicators?
Indicator	Not Evident	Somewhat Evident	Evident	Highly Evident
1. Our curriculum is clearly aligned with our approved content standards.
2. Our curriculum documents emphasize the big ideas and essential questions of key content areas.
3. Our curriculum objectives align with one or more of the six facets of understanding.
4. Our curriculum reinforces the need for teachers to use a range of assessment tools, including performance tasks, reflective assessments, and culminating projects.
5. Our curriculum reinforces the need for students to be clear about where they are headed and why they are going there.
6. Student engagement in the curriculum and a sense of ownership are content priorities.
7. Our curriculum emphasizes self-reflection and self-assessment.
8. Our curriculum emphasizes differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all students and to maximize their demonstration of evolving understanding.
9. Our curriculum is organized conceptually and moves students along a continuum from teacher-guided experience toward independent application, interpretation, and explanation.