Applying Standards Based Constructivism:
A Two-Step Guide for Motivating Students
Understanding by Design

The whole book may be interpreted as a crashing attack on standardized tests while being amazingly supportive of high standards. It is popular because it is provocative and profound, but it needs tremendous translation to put into daily use in K-12 classrooms.

The last of our samples of instructional models is perhaps the most famous and one that has been recognized by many educators as of the highest quality. Internationally known scholars Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe created Understanding By Design (l998) to revolutionize assessment and therefore to change the way we go about teaching students. To them, assessment drives instruction: teachers teach in the way that they feel is consistent with the way students are to be tested, a system some have derided as “teaching to the test” or as a seriously deficient, defensive approach (McNeil, l996). By opening up assessment to be much more of a creative and authentic reality, and one that is more thoughtful and more student-centered, the authors have produced a system that encourages students to engage in a great deal of meaningful learning activities which always strive for deeper understanding of important content.

UBD is NOT a model of the sort proposed by Hunter or 5E: there are no steps, no phases. What does exist is a thoughtfully prepared unit/lesson, designed around “essential questions” (otherwise known as big ideas, many of which are philosophical in nature and timeless in structure) and a learning sequence that strives for richer and deeper understanding by students. Application of their thinking is driven by several concerns articulated in an acronym called WHERE and which need to be answered before the teacher engages learners:

I. How will you help learners know WHERE they are headed and how will criteria for judging products (RUBRICS) be created?

II. How will you HOOK the students and point them toward exploring essential questions?

III. What learning experiences will ENGAGE learners?

IV. How will you cause students to REFLECT and dig deeper and/or refine their work

V. How will students EXHIBIT their understandings?

The fascinating part of this approach is their wonderful conceptualization of the meaning of the concept UNDERSTANDING. They see 6 ways to view understanding, each with its own manner of demonstration. The six facets are EXPLANATION, INTERPRETATION, APPLICATION, PERSPECTIVE, EMPATHY and SELF-KNOWLEDGE (and each has five levels resulting in a matrix/rubric that is complex, detailed, and well-layered.. It is also perhaps too complex for practical use by teachers).

Hence, supporters of UBD can structure projects and work efforts in a systematic and well articulated fashion and can call for increases in complexity as needed by the reality being faced in a particular classroom.

The whole book may be interpreted as a crashing attack on standardized tests while being amazingly supportive of high standards. It is popular because it is provocative and profound, but it needs tremendous translation to put into daily use in K-12 classrooms.

COMPARISON

Simply put, UBD is far more a philosophical treatise about the nature of knowledge and the purpose of schooling than is the work you are reading. They do take pains to suggest practical applications and the WHERE approach does include affective concerns that are well articulated in Flynn during the EXPLORATORY. However, whereas the this two-step sets out to help the teacher plan through both phases, UBD provides most of its energy in helping teachers create and assess tasks that produce increasing levels of understanding.

Comparing the two approaches can take one other perspective that may be helpful: each of the 6 facets of understanding offered by UBD can be matched by a particular kind of assignment called for in the DISCOVERY phase of the two-step. So, instead of an examination of contrasts, in this case we will make a synthesis of the two theories:

(l) Explanation: UBD expects students to explain HOW and WHY things happened, not just what. Invariably, their “essential questions” demand that kind of thinking. Two-step projects, then, should have a component that demands a student presentation of theory or of perspective.

(2) Interpretation: UBD expects students to be able to transform learnings into new forms that are consistent and meaningful to them. A good two-step discovery phase requires this: students must make it their own knowledge (or their own schema, to use Piagetian terms.)

(3) Application: Citing Piaget that “to understand is to invent”, application of knowledge and information to a novel and complex performance is the essence of demonstrating understanding. No rehearsal, no simple recreation of a teacher’s idea will suffice here: a good twp-step project must result in something new, idiosyncratic and personal (and it must be consistent with expectations of the disciplines and of the standards.)

(4) Perspective: to be consistent with expectations of critical-thinking theories, understanding should be able to be done by multiple perspectives and from different points of view. Essential in a western pluralist democratic society, students’ understandings must reflect a deep grasp of opposing points of view as well as the one being touted. Thus, a good twp-step project should demonstrate a students’ grasp of others’ views on the topic at hand and may well have to show that during the performance component. From a practical standpoint, schools have never been very good at this, and yet it clearly is a desirable and plausible goal.

(5) Empathy: Consistent with perspective is empathy, the facet of understanding that shows that a student not only understands various viewpoints but is able to confront and deal with the FEELINGS generated by certain ideas and concepts. They wish it to be more REAL, thus more experiential based and focus on the effects (and affect) of knowledge. For the twp-step, this is not a required part of the project at hand, but very often is included!

The rationale offered by UBD encourages us to push more affective concerns into the foci of the authentic task.

(6) Self-Knowledge: A result of good work is that the learner has a better understanding of self and one’s own biases, habits and patterns. This facet expects that learners will be mature enough to be able to see “shades of differences” and go beyond “simplistic categories”. The reflection built into the two-step's discovery phase suggests that this is something that will often be realized by learners and can be something that teachers develop simply by focusing on it.

Self-knowledge, then, is not self-selfishness but is more strategic. Beyond meta-cognition, this facet expects understanding from an epistemological perspective and suggests that students begin to understand themselves (and others) in a moral and just sense. Students who are frequently engaged in their work, are producing meaningful and useful understandings and are being seriously reflective---all demanded by the twp-step model—are moving toward the direction desired by this facet of UBD.

Thus, the praise for UBD is warranted and it is a most valuable tool to help teachers think deeply about what they’re trying to accomplish with students AND what it would look like when (or if) it occurred. The Two-Step model tries to help teachers move their students to a more engaged state, one where they are asking and answering meaningful (if not essential) questions and where they can think deeply about the processes they are undergoing. The two blend very well together in many ways. Teachers who become facile with the two-step model would do well to consult Understanding By Design to hone their skills regarding the framing of cognitively challenging and well-developed performance tasks.