Essential Questions

1. How can Understanding by Design help educators address the accountability issues that they face in an age of rising expectations and diminishing resources?
2. What lessons have we learned from long-term users of Understanding by Design?
3. Beyond unit development, how can Understanding by Design improve the culture and effectiveness of learning organizations?

For many educators, the new millennium is a time of rising expectations and diminishing resources. We live in an age of high-stakes accountability, when the demand for tangible confirmation of the value of educational innovations is growing, sometimes to a deafening roar. Federal and state governments are experiencing the simultaneous aftershocks of increasing budget deficits and expanding demand for scientific confirmation of the value of specific educational programs and practices. If we are to retain and institutionalize educational initiatives, we must prove their effectiveness.

This book explores one such powerful educational innovation—Understanding by Design (UbD)—and what we know about its implementation, effects, and possible future application. The teachers, administrators, national trainers, and college and university professors whose voices and experiences are captured here are all high-level users of UbD who have worked closely with its implementation process for several years. They were identified as successful practitioners by Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, and other members of the UbD training cadre, and they offered their feedback on the framework through a series of questionnaires. One-on-one interviews and focus groups reinforced initial data patterns and conclusions. These high-level users' analyses and insights represent the beginning of a long-term evaluation process of UbD, as well as a confirmation of its effect on the performance of students, staffs, and organizations.

The experiences of these high-level users, captured through their participation in this study, provide two intriguing and powerful lenses through which to examine this educational design framework. First, what we have learned about teaching for understanding reinforces how best to prepare all students for success in high-stakes accountability testing. Second, although UbD has so far emphasized unit development, high-level users universally affirm UbD's ability to improve the performance of schools in general. They hold that beyond its original purpose as an instructional design tool, UbD can be a powerful catalyst for organizational change, school reform, strategic planning, and continuous improvement.

This book offers a practical summary of insights and advice from high-level users to help you make the most of the UbD framework throughout your learning organization. It is especially useful for two primary audiences: (1) educators who are already working with UbD but need support in expanding and sustaining their efforts to improve student, teacher, and organization achievement and (2) individuals and groups who are new to UbD but can benefit from the lessons learned by such experienced users. Overall, this book provides a running commentary on lessons learned from the first five years of UbD's implementation. It synthesizes emergent themes, issues, and recommendations related to the following core issues:

• Initial training experiences and recommendations, including models and highlights of exemplary professional development programs related to UbD.
• Follow-up implementation strategies, emphasizing techniques for developing a UbD “community of learning.”
• Implications of the curriculum design and development framework, including samples of systemic initiatives for curriculum reform that will incorporate UbD.
• Possible assessment and evaluation processes, such as using UbD to address and promote student achievement related to district and state standards and high-stakes accountability testing.
• Instructional strategies that promote student understanding, including lessons learned from differentiated instruction for special populations (gifted and talented, special education, English as a second language [ESL], and the socioeconomically disadvantaged).
• An exploration of UbD as a catalyst for team building, strategic planning, and organization development.
• Implications for preservice education, including UbD's use in colleges and universities, as well as in teacher-induction programs.
• Ideas about UbD's future, including high-level users' recommendations for modifications, additions, and enhancements.

In addition to the essential questions at the start of each chapter, this book's exploration of UbD revolves around the following questions:

1. Why should schools and districts consider adopting the goals and design principles of the UbD framework?
2. How have successful practitioners learned to use UbD to improve student achievement, curriculum, instruction, assessment, staff development, and organizational change?
3. How have those practitioners addressed the inevitable problems and issues associated with the change process and UbD?
4. How can we use UbD principles to build active learning communities?
5. What are the most practical and useful recommendations from successful high-level users for educators who are beginning to work with UbD, including strategies for all phases of implementation?

Chapter 1, “Implementing Understanding by Design: A Summary of Lessons Learned,” provides an overview of the history and design elements of the UbD framework. For new or novice users, this chapter synthesizes key design principles and strategies, as well as UbD's research base. For both new and experienced users, Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive summary of lessons learned, issues cited, and recommendations made by a majority of the experienced UbD practitioners who participated in the study. It explores the recurrent ideas and essential questions posed by high-level users and investigates emergent rec-ommendations, many of which are presented in the practitioners' own words. The chapter closes with the first of the book's nine organizational assessment questionnaires, which are suitable for use as part of school improvement and strategic planning efforts.

Chapter 2, “Designing and Developing School and District Curricula,” explores how schools and districts are integrating the UbD framework into curriculum design, development, and implementation. This chapter provides practical advice about maintaining the traditional UbD unit focus while expanding its influence to address all areas of curriculum management. Chapter 2 concludes with a toolkit of proposed guidelines for curriculum developers to use when auditing and revising their curricula, using UbD principles and strategies.

Chapter 3, “Promoting Student Achievement and Addressing State and District Standards,” confronts universal issues in educational assessment and accountability. How, for example, can UbD be used to improve student performance on standardized tests and related assessments? How can school staff members use UbD's principles and strategies to help all students succeed, especially those associated with special populations, such as gifted and talented, special education, ESL, and the socioeconomically disadvantaged? Perhaps most significantly, this chapter synthesizes high-level users' reflections on differentiated instruction and how UbD contributes to monitoring and adjusting instruction to accommodate the strengths and needs of individual students.

Chapter 4, “Promoting Student Understanding,” examines the instructional implications of the UbD framework, emphasizing how successful practitioners have internalized the strategies and processes implicit in Stage Three's WHERETO template (see Chapter 1, page 19). Using the feedback and examples from successful teachers, administrators, and staff developers, this chapter describes how UbD principles can transform classrooms. The chapter provides useful recommendations related to differentiated instruction. How, for example, can we use a process of continuous improvement in our classrooms? How can we assess individual students' strengths and needs and address them throughout the implementation of standards-driven lessons, units, courses, and programs?

Chapter 5, “Promoting Exemplary Professional Development Programs and Practices,” explores the relationship between the UbD framework and successful staff development programs and initiatives. This chapter emphasizes what high-level users have discovered about the best approaches to training and professional development related to successful Understanding by Design implementation. Beginning with a brief discussion of the special needs of the adult learner, the chapter summarizes training pitfalls and problems that result from failing to address participants' desire for meaningful and authentic experiences aligned with their expressed needs. Next, the chapter investigates how such ideas and processes align with contemporary change theory, including what is known about collaborative work cultures and the idea of continuous improvement as a guiding principle for successful professional development. It closes with a summary of how current electronic resources for Understanding by Design can complement district- and school-based professional development activities.

Chapter 6, “Improving Preservice Training and Teacher-Induction Programs,” examines the critical issue of how we can best prepare teachers in preservice situations for success with all learners, particularly within the context of increasingly diverse student populations. Schools and districts face a double-edged sword: replacing growing numbers of retiring teachers while confronting demands for more rigorous accountability and higher student achievement in response to increasingly ambitious standards. This chapter addresses UbD's role in numerous preservice situations and venues, including college and university teacher-training programs and cross-institutional partnerships for professional development. Chapter 6 also describes successful teacher-induction programs in various school systems, with an emphasis on how sustained mentoring and professional development can support greater levels of new teacher retention and success.

Chapter 7, “Facilitating Organization Development, Continuous Improvement, and Strategic Planning,” extends the investigation of UbD to the area of improving organizational cultures and the related process of strategic planning and continuous improvement. Every district has a protocol for school improvement planning. Frequently, however, this process is characterized by a top-down or committee-mandated plan that stakeholders too often disregard or misunderstand. Therefore, Chapter 7 examines what UbD implies for successful team building, collaborative work cultures, and institutional renorming through organization development. It summarizes what experienced users suggest about forming a genuine learning organization that involves all stakeholders in the process of organizational reform and renewal.

The book concludes with Chapter 8, “Looking to the Future of Understanding by Design,” which explores high-level users' views of the hot spots, trouble points, and future trends associated with education in the 21st century. This chapter investigates the relationship between UbD and emergent trends and themes, such as (1) federal and state testing and accountability initiatives designed to diminish the achievement gap and to ensure success for all; (2) the continuing need to improve focus areas such as curriculum, assessment, instruction, professional development, stakeholder involvement, and parent and community outreach; and (3) avenues for making connections and for forging links between the UbD framework and other national education renewal frameworks, such as Robert J. Marzano's What Works in Schools and differentiated instruction, as articulated by Carol Ann Tomlinson in The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (1999). The book ends with a series of vision statements as high-level users discuss the future of UbD in light of their experiences and insights.

* * *

Before you begin your journey through this book, consider two resources. Figure 0.1 summarizes the big ideas cited most frequently by high-level users who participated in the study. It reinforces the universal themes behind the UbD framework, plus the common pitfalls and limitations of the framework that most high-level users have experienced. Figure 0.2 translates those big ideas into the essential questions that experienced practitioners suggest are at the heart of their use of the UbD framework. Ideally, the ideas and questions will help to frame your exploration and understanding of Understanding by Design and help you make the most of the framework within your learning organization.

Figure 0.1. The Big Ideas About Understanding by Design Most Often Cited

Understanding by Design (UbD) is both a framework of research-based best practices and a language for unifying educators' work to promote high levels of achievement and understanding among students. It should not be presented to staff as “one more program to do” because most staff members already feel overloaded with accountability programs and related initiatives. A primary value of UbD is its ability to get educators to identify the core ideas and questions that form the infrastructure of the content or disciplines that they teach. In effect, UbD promotes conversation about what is essential to the curriculum. This focus on underlying concepts and questions provides a tool that educators can use to address the issue of time constraints. By building consensus about what is nonnegotiable for all students to know, do, and understand, they can identify an elegant curriculum that promotes all students' understanding and still ensure time for in-depth inquiry, questioning, and conceptual exploration. UbD requires that its users genuinely know and understand the content for which they are designing a curriculum. For many users, UbD has led to professional dialogue and insight about the purposefulness and universal implications of subjects and programs. The backward design process provides a set of principles that reinforce educators' analysis of accountability standards. By beginning with the end in mind, educators work collaboratively to determine what students should know, be able to do, and understand as students master content and reach performance standards. In these times of high-stakes accountability testing, UbD provides a powerful rationale for expanding assessment repertoires to include performance-based assessments and students' reflections. UbD tools and processes support a “photo album” approach to monitoring student progress, rather than “snapshot” assessment measures based on tests alone. UbD reinforces educators' ability to integrate assessment and instruction, thus leading to genuine differentiation that accommodates the unique strengths and needs of each student. Ideally, Stages Two and Three should be seamless in that teachers should constantly monitor student achievement as they modify instructional and learning behaviors that address a student's evolving strengths and needs. Practitioners seek quantitative data to confirm UbD's value. Longitudinal evaluation studies to determine the effect of UbD implementation on student achievement, staff performance, and organizational productivity must be a major future priority. UbD can and should expand beyond unit development. The next logical phase is for multiple districts to explore UbD's implications for and use in broader systemic curriculum design, development, and implementation. Until participants' unit designs are show-cased in context within a district's curriculum, they remain stand-alone products, removed from an organizational context. To this point, several key aspects of UbD have been either ignored or underemphasized and, thus, merit increased attention: The need to create a national database synthesizing student achievement data in schools and districts with high levels of UbD use. Such a database can form the basis for a series of program evaluation studies that will determine the framework's effect. The need to do much more with the connection between UbD and special populations, including gifted and talented, special education, ESL, and the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The need to articulate a relationship between UbD and other widely disseminated initiatives for professional development and school improvement. Those initiatives include differentiated instruction, as articulated in Tomlinson (1999); What Works in Schools, as articulated in Marzano (2003); continuous improvement and strategic planning; and performance assessment. The need to reconcile the connection between UbD and high-stakes accountability testing, including helping educators to overcome misconceptions about test preparation. The need to increase administrators' involvement in UbD, through means such as showcasing schools and districts that have made strides in making UbD a part of their organizational culture and instructional leadership. Additional models and exemplars aligned with best practices in continuous improvement are needed. The need to move forward in the use of electronic technology to create a national and international learning community regarding UbD. Currently, educators struggle to access and integrate the evolving structure and resources available through the UbD Exchange. In addition, there needs to be a more integrated, holistic approach to publicizing the use of UbD-focused videotapes, UbD-focused online courses, and Exchange-based exemplary units. The need for sustained, long-term collaborative inquiry into UbD, rather than one-shot training sessions. The need to build more cross-institutional partnerships among colleges, universities, and school districts that are responsible for integrating UbD into preservice teacher preparation and professional development programs. Although a growing number of preservice training institutions are using the framework, the perception lingers that UbD should be reserved for more senior staff members.

Figure 0.2. The Essential Questions About Understanding by Design Most Often Asked

How do we overcome educators' anxiety and tension associated with the changes in mind-sets and practices required by UbD? How can we expand our ability to access models, benchmarks, and exemplars of UbD units and related curriculum products? How can we move beyond the initial training phase of UbD's implementation so we make UbD a natural part of our organizational culture and operating practices? How can we overcome the misconception that UbD is just for the best and the brightest, and not for all students and staff? How can we use our UbD experiences to transform staff attitudes and perceptions about standardized testing and overcome archaic notions of drill-and-kill teaching and test preparation? How can we acquire and ensure the long-term availability of resources required to sustain successful UbD implementation (e.g., time, materials, curriculum development)? How can we integrate UbD into our continuous improvement and strategic planning efforts? How can we help teachers move beyond unit design and into unit implementation as they use the principles and strategies associated with each stage of UbD's backward design? How do we make UbD a full staff effort, with instructional leadership by administrators and teacher-leaders who model and own this framework? How can we ensure that UbD is a clear and natural part of instruction and learning for all students, including those in primary grades, those enrolled in special education or ESL instruction, and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged?