Sigh. Despite our cautions, well-meaning local change agents continue to make mistakes in how Understanding by Design (UbD) is implemented. Below, find 12 ways of killing the effort for sure, and some suggestions for how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes:
- Fixate on terminology and boxes in the Template and provide little or no insight into the issues and purposes that underlie UbD.
INSTEAD:
- Start with common sense through an exercise: “You really understand if you can…” and use staff answers as the basis for initial experiments in understanding-focused learning.
- Delay showing all the Template boxes with all their names.
- Concentrate on making clear that the aim is a better focus on understanding as opposed to superficial coverage
- Use whatever language makes sense locally to make the process and design tools transparent
- Mandate that every teacher must use UbD for ALL of their planning immediately (without sufficient training, on-going support, or structured planning time).
INSTEAD: Think big, but start small and smart –
- Work with volunteers at first
- Ask all teachers to plan ONE unit in Year One.
- Encourage teachers to work w/ a colleague or team, and begin w/ a familiar unit topic.
- Provide additional designated planning and peer review time.
- Provide online help
- Introduce UbD immediately as this year’s focus to suggest that UbD can be fully implemented in a year, and that last year’s initiative bears no relation to it. Thus: This, too, shall pass.
INSTEAD: Develop and publish a multi-year plan that links your long-term goals to UbD strengths, and shows how UbD will be slowly implemented as part of a complete strategic plan.
- Attempt to implement too many initiatives simultaneously (e.g., UbD, Differentiated Instruction, Curriculum Mapping, Marzano’s “Strategies” etc.)
INSTEAD: Develop a multi-stage multi-year plan to improve current initiatives via UbD –
- improve mapping categories
- differentiate via Essential Questions
- unpack Standards to identify transfer goals
- develop a 1-page graphic showing how all local initiatives are really a part of the same one effort (e.g. limbs of a tree, pieces of a puzzle, supports of a building, etc.)
- Assume that staff members understand the need for UbD and/or will naturally welcome it. i.e. hurriedly prescribe UbD before helping staff to understand and appreciate the need for change – ensuring that they do not own the change.
INSTEAD: Establish the need for a change – the diagnosis – before proposing UbD as a prescription. Make sure that staff see UbD as a logical response to a deficit or opportunity that they recognize and own.
- Provide one introductory presentation on UbD and assume that teachers now have the ability to implement UbD well.
INSTEAD: Design professional development “backward” from your understanding goals, i.e. practice what UbD preaches –
- Make staff meetings and walk-throughs devoted to UbD learning and trying out
- Help PLCs develop action plans for trying out unit ideas while also reading further on unit design and how people learn.
- Use annual personal goals (SLO’s, SGOs, etc.) as the action research ground for the year, based on understanding goals.
- Provide UbD training for teachers, but not for administrators; give leaders and supervisors the same training as teachers.
INSTEAD:
- Establish parallel tracks of training for Principals and Asst. Principals in which they work on how to look for elements of UbD in action. (They do not need training in how to design units, only how to offer feedback)
- Develop peer review systems so that teachers and administrators work together in informally and formally giving feedback to units
- Develop supervisory teams to develop a UbD approach to curriculum writing
- Provide minimal UbD training for some willing teachers in a Train-the-Trainers program, then expect immediate and effective turn-key training of all other staff by those few pioneers.
INSTEAD:
- Establish a process for carefully soliciting, interviewing, testing, and hiring would-be trainers.
- Develop a year-long training program
- Support trainers with on-line and in-person troubleshooting
- Train people in Stage 1 in Year 1, Stage 2 in Year 2, Stage 3 in Year 3 – insuring that no useful results will occur for years, and the big picture is rarely seen.
INSTEAD: Train so that designers have tried out a few unit strands through all 3 Stages (e.g. just a design based on 1 Essential Question) at least twice in year One, then a full-blown unit by year’s end.
10. Announce that UbD is the official way to plan all lessons from here on – even though UbD is not a lesson-plan system.
INSTEAD:
- Make clear that UbD focuses on unit planning.
- Provide differentiated freedom in how people write lessons
- Perhaps make elements of Stages 1 & 2 mandatory, but leave Stage 3 open to personal bent and creativity
11. Standardize all implementation and experimentation. Don’t permit options/alternatives/different approaches to learning, trying, and using ubd. Don’t play to any particular interests, talents, and readiness of staff.
INSTEAD: Differentiate the UbD work –
- Build in choices of role (trainers/designers/piloters/observers),
- Try out simpler as well as full versions of the Template, based on readiness
- Build a schedule that permits others to join in with R & D later, on a rolling timeline
12. Start with any old unit.
INSTEAD: start with units that are not engaging and effective currently. What do you have to lose??
This is an updated version of material that can be found in Schooling by Design and The UbD Advanced Guide to Unit Design. Both books have many other ideas for how to plan reform to avoid these errors.
19 Responses
Mr. Wiggins … I want to tell you how much UbD has meant to me! I cannot imagine education without this model. Although I’m certain that some might not like the analogy I’m about to make, because of fears over the corporatization of eduction, it reminds me of my previous career as a brand manager. If I’m going to introduce a product into a market, I had to think about what end result I wanted … what would be the basis of success and failure, what was possible given any limitations or situations that might arise, etc … only then could I work backwards to the present and outline a strategy that would get me to my goal in the most efficient and effective way. So, to a second career teacher, thank you for creating an promoting a useful tool that makes an incredible difference not only in the classroom, but in my students’ lives.
Thank YOU! Interestingly enough, we often hear from 2nd career teachers that UbD speaks clearly to them, given their prior jobs. Often, for example, people in engineering, art, the military, sales say similar things. A deeper lesson is arguably there: unless you really think through your desired results and the likely obstacles that you face in achieving them you end up being a naive and frustrated educator. Again, thanks for your kind words – and enjoy those kids!
I would echo this. As a former engineer, I never questioned for a moment that designing my instructional activities should start with defining the design objectives and constraints and then backing out from there. Long before I heard about your work, I was doing this and when I discovered UbD, I was really happy to get some great ideas about how to do it better and more efficiently.
When I became a teacher it really surprised me to find that most teachers just used the textbook layout as a default instructional plan and weren’t really thinking about what they wanted the students to learn, just what tasks they wanted them to do.
And your 12 points about how to kill anything good in education are right on. Unfortunately, most of these 12 points have been followed so consistently and repeatedly that many of us who have been around for a decade or more approach any new idea administrators introduce as if it is not worth investing any effort into, because it will be replaced by the next flavor-of-the-month before we can possibly implement it. And, sadly, we’re usually right.
Grant, as always, I appreciate the positive and down-to-earth and common-sensical — but also professionally insightful! — approach you take, this time to UbD. Keeping the learner in mind, and at the heart of the process, is always the goal…Thank you!
Grant– great post (as usual)…what do you suggest principals look for in UbD elements in classrooms?
Good Q, Rob.
1. Who is asking the questions? (Not just teacher)
2. Are there many higher-order questions – and sufficient wait time? (Both students and teacher)
3. Who is answering the questions? (Not just teacher)
4. Who is making the inferences, drawing conclusions? (Not primarily teacher)
5. Is there too much constant scaffolding and prompting? (undercuts HOT, autonomy, and understanding)
6. Who is talking the most? (should not be teacher)
7. Is there a constant request for reasons and evidence when opinions are offered – by students as well as teacher?
8. Never mind what’s posted on board: do students know what the POINT of the day’s learning is when asked?
9. Is the worked framed by questions that keep getting revisited?
10.Are there constant checks for student understanding?
I don’t think this is exhaustive but it is a start…
thank Grant….what do you say to SPED teachers about #5?
Well, I deliberately said “too much” without pinning it down any further 🙂 There has to be some challenge to think, to try to understand. That is in every child’s interest. Having spent all last year in a co-teaching class locally I would say that our expectations of SPED kids are often too low. What these 2 teachers accomplished was amazing, expecting inquiry and accountable talk from ALL kids, helping only when absolutely needed.
Grant,
I appreciate your blog post. Here are my major take-aways that spoke to me this morning:
1. Think BIG but start small and smart (one unit plan ready for improvement)
2. Backward design a multi-year implementation plan that links to strategic plan and includes training for ALL staff(parallel tracks for leaders)
3. Establish the need for a change and make connections with local language
Good take-aways! More elegant than my post. #3 is the most important because without it the other points are moot.
I LOVE this list. In addition to UbD, you could substitute almost any new initiative that we try to bring in. We seem to make the same mistakes every time we want teachers and administrators to embrace something “new.” When I train in UbD, I always quote someone I heard once who said, “UbD training is a process, not an event.” I certainly did not “get it” the very first time I had the training. We have to model what we are teaching.
Grant, thank you (again) for the important work of clarifying the importance of the “negative approach” to UbD, what is is not rather than people presuming you start from some pure unfiltered starting point. Schools are always “in medias res” but often neglect to operate out of this mindset and employ phraseology like “new and improved” as if we were selling toothpaste. That is perhaps the most inviting trait of UbD work: it meets teachers and schools where they are at and calls them to continually better themselves!
Reblogged this on principalaim and commented:
Since I am a huge Understanding By Design follower, I simply had to reblog this post from Grant Wiggins. tlb
I consider this information highly valuable for education personnel that will implement UbD suitably for the first time. According to our own local idiosyncrasy and eagerness to initiate formal UbD development and follow up activities and to avoid divergent delusions that could alter UbD emphasis, we are considering additional elucidations on the following numbers:
2: INSTEAD: Think big, but start small and smart –
• Conduct a 5 minutes interview with 2 teachers selected at random every 2 weeks for follow up activities
• Disseminate achievements among faculty members and school community
• Celebrate outcomes
8: INSTEAD:
• Develop a year-long training program, including formal and informal mentoring and coaching activities
Thank you very much for this up-to-the-minute and relevant information.
HAA. BEST LAID PLANS
Lynn Glueck School Improvement Partner, High Schools Madison Metropolitan School District 608.213.6018
My district, sadly, does 11 of these items. The final one is only not completed because of lack of teacher training in general.
I have forwarded this article up the chain in the hope that we will be able to implement UbD the way that it was intended and are able to provide the best learning environment for our students.
Well put my friend. I want you, A.F, B.Z. and I to meet when it is convenient for you.
Signed, P.S. (WHSD Pres.)
Reblogged this on Dr. Rust's Reflections and commented:
Love these thought from Grant Wiggins about Understanding by Design. For those interested in curriculum and instructional design, this is definitely worth the read!!!
Reblogged this on Traditionally Twisted.