Backward Design Essay Example for Free

Backward Design Es feel outDeliberate and contracted instructional rule requires us as teachers and curriculum writers to make an important shift in our thought process slightly the spirit of our job. The shift involves deliberateing a great deal, first, about the particular disciplines sought, and the manifest of such learnings, before thinking about what we, as the teacher, will do or provide in teaching and learning activities. though considerations about what to teach and how to teach it may dominate our thinking as a matter of habit, the altercate is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow. Our lessons, units, and telephone circuits should be logically inferred from the results sought, not derived from the methods, obtains, and activities with which we ar most comfortable. Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving special(prenominal) results. It is analogous to travel planning. Our frame employments should provide a set of itineraries deliberately forgeed to gratify cultural goals earlier than a purposeless tour of all the major sites in a foreign facery. In short, the crush designs derive disinclined from the learnings sought.The appropriateness of this approach becomes clearer when we consider the educational purpose that is the focus of this book intelligence. We groundworknot say how to teach for understanding or which substantial and activities to use until we are quite clear about which ad hoc understandings we are after and what such understandings look like in workout. We can beat out decide, as guides, what sites to arrive at our student tourists visit and what proper(postnominal) culture they should experience in their brief time there still if we are clear about the particular understandings about the culture we want them to take home. Only by having specified the desired results can we focus on the content, methods, and activities most li kely to achieve those results. But some teachers begin with and remain focused on textbooks, favored lessons, and time-honored activitiesthe inputs rather than deriving those means from what is implied in the desired resultsthe output.To put it in an odd way, in any case many teachers focus on the teaching and not the learning. They sp remainder most of their time thinking, first, about what they will do, what materials they will use, and what they will ask students to do rather than first considering what the learner will necessitate in order to accomplish the learning goals. Consider a typical episode of what might be called content-focused design instead of results-focused design. The teacher might base a lesson on a particular topic (e.g., racial prejudice), select a resource (e.g., To Kill a Mockingbird), choose specific instructional methods based on the resource and topic (e.g., Socratic seminar to discuss the book and cooperative groups to analyze stereotypical images in films and on television), and take to thereby to cause learning (and meet a few English/language arts standards).Finally, the teacher might think up a few essay questions and quizzes for assessing student understanding of the book. This approach is so common that we may well be tempted to reply, What could be wrong with such an approach? The short answer lies in the basic questions of purpose wherefore are we asking students to overhear word this particular novelin other words, what learnings will we seek from their having read it? Do the students grasp why and how the purpose should influence their studying? What should students be expected to understand and do upon reading the book, related to our goals beyond the book? Unless we begin our design work with a clear brainstorm into larger purposeswhereby the book is properly thought of as a means to an educational end, not an end unto itselfit is unlikely that all students will understand the book (and their performance obligat ions).Without being self-conscious of the specific understandings about prejudice we seek, and how reading and discussing the book will help develop such insights, the goal is far too vague The approach is to a greater extent by hope than by design. Such an approach ends up inadvertently being one that could be described like this Throw some content and activities a superchargest the wall and hope some of it sticks. Answering the why? and so what? questions that older students always ask (or want to), and doing so in concrete terms as the focus of curriculum planning, is thus the essence of understanding by design. What is exhausting for many teachers to see ( and easier for students to feel) is that, without such explicit and transparent priorities, many students find day-to-day work confusing and frustrating.The twin sins of traditional designMore generally, weak educational design involves two kinds of purposelessness, manifest throughout the educational world from kindergarte n through graduate discipline. We call these the twin sins of traditional design. The error of activity-oriented design might be called hands-on without being minds-onengaging experiences that lead only accidentally, if at all, to insight or achievement. The activities, though fun and interesting, do not lead anywhere intellectually. Such activity-oriented curricula lack an explicit focus on important ideas and appropriate evidence of learning, especially in the minds of the learners. A second form of aimlessness goes by the name of coverage, an approach in which students march through a textbook, paginate by page (or teachers through lecture notes) in a valiant attempt to traverse all the factual material within a prescribed time.Coverage is thus like a whirlwind tour of Europe, perfectly summarized by the old movie title If Its Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, which properly suggests that no overarching goals inform the tour. As a broad generalization, the activity focus is more t ypical at the elementary and lower middle school levels, whereas coverage is a prevalent secondary school and college problem. No guiding intellectual purpose or clear priorities frame the learning experience. In neither case can students see and answer such questions as these Whats the point? Whats the big idea here? What does this help us understand or be able to do? To what does this relate? Why should we learn this? Hence, the students try to engage and follow as scoop they can, hoping that meaning will emerge.The three formats of backward design dress 1 Identify desired resultsWhat should students know, understand, and be able to do? What content is worthy of understanding? What enduring understandings are desired? In point 1 we consider our goals, examine established content standards (national, state, district), and review curriculum expectations. Because typically we have more content than we can reasonably address within the available time, we must make choices. This fir st stage in the design process calls for clarity about priorities.Stage 2 Determine acceptable evidenceHow will we know if students have achieved the desired results? What will we accept as evidence of student understanding and proficiency? The backward design orientation suggests that we think about a unit or course in terms of the collected assessment evidence needed to document and validate that the desired learning has been achieved, not simply as content to be covered or as a series of learning activities. This approach encourages teachers and curriculum planners to first think like an assessor before designing specific units and lessons, and thus to consider up front how they will determine if students have attained the desired understandings.Stage 3 Plan learning experiences and instructionWith clearly identified results and appropriate evidence of understanding in mind, it is now the time to fully think through the most appropriate instructional activities. Several disting uish questions must be considered at this stage of backward design What enabling fellowship (facts, concepts, principles) and skills (processes, procedures, strategies) will students need in order to perform effectively and achieve desired results? What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills? What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals? What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals? Note that the specifics of instructional planningchoices about teaching methods, sequence of lessons, and resource materialscan be successfully completed only after we identify desired results and assessments and consider what they imply. Teaching is a means to an end. Having a clear goal helps to focus our planning and guide earnest action toward the mean results. ConclusionBackward design may be thought of, in other words, as purposeful task analysis Given a worthy task to be accomplish ed, how do we best get everyone equipped? Or we might think of it as building a wise itinerary, using a map Given a destination, whats the most effective and efficient route? Or we might think of it as planning for coaching What must learners master if they are to effectively perform? What will count as evidence on the field, not merely in drills, that they really get it and are prompt to perform with understanding, knowledge, and skill on their own? How will the learning be designed so that learners capacities are developed through use and feedback? This is all quite logical when you come to understand it, but backward from the perspective of much habit and tradition in our field.A major change from common practice occurs as designers must begin to think about assessment before deciding what and how they will teach. sort of than creating assessments near the conclusion of a unit of study (or relying on the tests provided by textbook publishers, which may not completely or appropr iately assess our standards and goals), backward design calls for us to make our goals or standards specific and concrete, in terms of assessment evidence, as we begin to plan a unit or course. The good-for-naught meets the road with assessment. Three different teachers may all be working toward the same content standards, but if their assessments vary considerably, how are we to know which students have achieved what? Agreement on needed evidence of learning leads to greater curricular coherence and more reliable evaluation by teachers. Equally important is the long-term gain in teacher, student, and parent insight about what does and does not count as evidence of meeting labyrinthine standards.