Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Understanding by Design (UbD) is a framework for curriculum, instructional, and assessment planning that is intended to focus the designer's attention on issues of deep understanding; so called "teaching for understanding".

A core concern in UbD is the backward design process, where first learning outcomes are selected, then assessments of attainment of those outcomes are designed, and then instruction is designed to ensure attainment of those outcomes. This is backwards in the sense that, usually, instructional design preceeds questions of how attainment will be assessed. The backwards design process is intended to focus attention on attainment of outcomes, rather than on instruction for the sake of instruction.

UbD addresses six aspects of education that are considered critical for deep understandin. These include:

• students' ability to explain ideas
• students' ability to interpret information
• students' ability to apply to new contexts
• students' ability to have perspective (see the big picture)
• students' ability to empathize (find value in the opinions of others)
• students' ability to have self-knowledge about the topic of interest and their own learning processes (be able to reflect on ones own biases and assumptions)

Teaching for understanding addresses the need for deep learning by asking the designer to ask, "what essential questions lie at the heart of this topic?" Essential questions are those questions that involve big ideas in the topic area and are enduring-- they may not have certain answers, but rather drive one to come to understand the topic in new ways.

Contributed by: William Doane wd213355@albany.edu