A recent query via Twitter asked a question we often hear: isn’t UbD (or any planning process) antithetical to such approaches as project-based learning and inquiry-based learning, since you can’t and shouldn’t plan for an unknown serendipitous result? More generally, isn’t there something faintly oppressive and hampering of creativity in such planning approaches?
In short: no. The question conflates planning with micro-managing. We plan – whether in the family, on the playing field, for battle, or for musical production – in order to achieve desirable results, in the face of uncertainty and opportunity. But that in no way means we advocate rigid recipes. Let me explain.
A plan is a framework for clarifying purposes and the best means of causing them, in order to achieve the most satisfying and appropriate outcome. The ‘outcome’ here is not a specific pre-determined event/result but a set of desired conditions. Thus, if the goal is to have students investigate their own questions via projects and inquiries, we must plan for “satisfying outcomes of inquiry” so that the most optimal specific results occur. We therefore provide students with research advice, researchable question guidelines, and rubrics related to inquiry and presentation. We further might ask students to check in along the way with note-cards, drafts, and dress rehearsals. We do not know the specific outcome, nor do we mandate a particular approach, but we properly plan (and help students plan) to achieve satisfying results – regardless of each student’s particular question, methods, or form of communication of results.
As I mentioned in my post on models, there seems to be a confusion on the part of some educators about the role of examples, criteria, and guidance in achieving creative excellence. You need multiple models to inspire and focus; you need deliberately-designed experiences to escape habit and formulae. Creativity by design is not a contradiction in terms, in short. As anyone who has ever attended a workshop run by IDEO or a class in acting or drawing, creativity is fostered and made more likely by some deliberate moves and modeling offered by master teachers. Mere free thinking doesn’t often yield much.
I find it odd that so many teachers think that merely liberating students from constraints is the key to creative expression and true learning. Dewey lamented this endlessly, because many of the proponents of progressive education fell into this mistake and hurt the cause. On the contrary, creativity requires working with and through constraints: think of haiku and architecture – not to mention genuinely creative experimental science. Perhaps teachers who talk this way are simply compensating for the micro-management kids often face today at home and in school. But quality work rarely comes from just being given free time and no guidance or standards.
Practically speaking, then, in UbD the teacher-designer states the goal for the inquiry: “Successful inquiry is the goal of this unit, and success means that the student has both made important personal discoveries, and achieved some interesting findings or results. The student will communicate their findings/products in a way that is engaging to other students.” With such a goal in hand, we can easily imagine a few other UbD elements:
Essential Questions: What’s interesting here? Why does this matter (if only to me)? How can I make my inquiry and findings of interest to others?
Understandings: If you look closely enough and engage yourself enough in the setting, there is always an intriguing and important question, problem, unknown, or uncertainty lurking underneath what is already known. Just because it interest you doesn’t mean it interests others: empathize with your audience.
Criteria for the project: a researchable question of substance, a methodical approach to the research and presentation, a defensible finding/result/solution/product, an engaging presentation
These elements then suggest some helpful protocols, resources, mini-lessons and feedback sessions that would need to be built in, by design, to optimize the student experience. Without in any way hampering creativity.
I am all for there being times in which we just mess round and see what comes up, but your ability to see anew depends upon preparation and planning. Pasteur famously said it well: Chance favors the prepared mind. Building in time for playful imagining and a removal of habitual constraints is also vital. But note the phrasing: we build in time for it by design, just as we formulate rules for brainstorming as part of an explicit and well thought-out plan. Thus, to turn the need for creative moments into a philosophy of anti-planning just makes no sense.
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8 Responses
I was at a workshop with Dr. Susan Szachowicz earlier this week and she discussed some similar ideas related to planning for success. My take away from her workshop, which was re-iterated in your post is “are we hoping for success by chance or are we planning for success by design?” Planning provides the framework/structure through which teachers and students can then be free to explore, create, and innovate.
You have left me thinking about defining success as it relates to the conditions/outcomes of the inquiry/problem-solving task. Thanks!
I think Stravinsky expressed this paradox that exists between creative freedom and strict boundaries excellently:
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.”
Initially, I thought this sounded strange coming from Stravinsky, but it makes sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfb54y_Qeeg
The interesting thing here is the word “planning” and how we interpret this word. Some teachers feel that this word means, How many days do we have to spend on this unit and what will we do specifically each day.
It often goes something like this:
Day 1: Introduction to topic
Day 2: More about that topic
Day 3: Move on to next topic
Day 4: Maybe give a quiz to see if they have learned the topics so far
Day 5: Next topic
etc
etc
etc
Day y: Review day
Day z: Unit test (Common Assessment: of course which means exactly the same questions)
Grade in the grade book and then on to the next unit.
Basically WE are determining what questions we want them about. WE are determining how they will learn about them. WE are then telling them that they will all learn it at the same rate. (We know that all kids learn things at the same rate.) We don’t do a very good job with assessing whether or not our kids got any closer to understanding our enduring understandings or essential questions.
It’s funny how we throw around these simple terms like “planning” and they can destroy the TRUE meaning of what this blog is about. For some teachers it so hard to let go of the control. But if anything stifles creativity, its over planning.
Thanks, Grant. I had not seen the challenge to planning that you refer to – my assessment class has discussed Alfie Kohn’s [English Journal article] where he voices his objections to rubrics as an obstruction to creativity – but decided it was all in how you plan and use them.
Marcy
I assume you saw my previous blog post on this very issue (and my little swipe at A’s views). I plan a Part 2 for this week…
I agree that creativity works better within some structure. But I cringed a little at seeing project-based learning talked about as if it’s totally student-driven and very loosely structured “open inquiry.” That’s how many progressive educators in the 80s and 90s saw it, but in our work today at the Buck Institute, we talk about a wide range of what qualifies as PBL, and we really emphasize that it is NOT like “discovery learning.” We think old-school PBL still has a place, if done well, but too much of a loosey-goosey approach has given the methodology a bad rep for many educators.
We guide teachers in very careful planning of projects, starting with the learning goals for content and 21st century competencies, a Driving Question, major products to be completed, etc. There’s still room for students to pursue their own inquiry and make a lot of decisions, including choosing how to demonstrate their learning in some cases, but always guided by the teacher. If teachers are expert enough and students are ready for projects at the farther end of the “student voice & choice” scale, then fine, go for it.
Our model for this more structured approach to PBL is described on our site (bie.org) and in an article we wrote for Educational Leadership magazine in Sept. 2010, “7 Essentials for Project Based Learning (we’ve since added an 8th, “Significant Content”): http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Seven_Essentials_for_Project-Based_Learning.aspx
Thanks, Grant, always love reading your thoughts!
John – I of course know you folks at Buck don’t think or talk this way, but you know and I know that this sentiment is common among educators. Indeed, the post originated in a twitter conversation in which a few people could not see how UbD fit with an inquiry-based curriculum, and in one case were getting pushback from staff on having to plan.
Plus ca change…
Grant,
Two points strike me here:
1. In order to be creative or inquire you need lots of skills and interests and curiosities. In order create a new ….. one needs to learn some new skills ….you need a plan – in life if I want to get better at golf I need to practice and have a lesson or two so that I can alter my swing etc… so in schools you need a plan, explicit skill and concept work, feedback and time to practice to achieve a goal.
2. Models – we all have sub conscious models in order to operate in life…. and the more complex we are seeking to alter or improve, if you like the word … our work our practice then the more complex a model we need to see – so that the actions we need to take make sense – are connected. I often refer to the thinking of Elmore here when he talked about the instructional core – saying we needed to change all the elements of the core (content – teacher instruction – student engagement with the teacher and the content through learning tasks being the core) not just one element to be successful.
Lots to ponder
Mark Walker