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What is understanding and how does it differ from knowing? What do we want students to understand and be able to do? What enduring knowledge is worth understanding? How will we know that students truly understand and can apply knowledge in a meaningful way? How can we design our courses and units to emphasize understanding and "uncoverage" rather than "coverage"? Understanding by Design explores these questions and provides practical solutions for the teacher-designer. The book opens by analyzing the logic of backward design as an alternative to coverage and activity-oriented plans. Though backward from habit, this approach brings more focus and coherence to instruction. Authors Wiggins and McTighe propose a multifaceted approach, with the six "facets" of understanding. The facets combine with backward design to provide a powerful, practical framework for designing curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Beyond its theories, Understanding by Design offers practical design tools, including criteria for selecting "big ideas" worthy of deep understanding, strategies for framing units of study around essential questions, a continuum of assessment methods for determining the degree to which students understand, and the WHERE framework, which enhances student engagement and "rethinking." The book concludes with a unit design template and standards to support quality control at the local level. Understanding by Design will help educators enhance their understanding of understanding, so that the curriculum and assessments they design truly focus on enhancing the understanding of their students.

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CHOICE Review

Wiggins has published extensively on "authentic assessment," the movement for student achievement measures to reflect more closely the real-world expectations for students than do traditional, multiple-choice tests (see Assessing Student Performance: Exploring the Purpose and Limits of Testing, CH Jun'94, and Educative Assessments: Designing Assessments to Inform and Improve Performance, CH Jan'99). This volume extends his advice to teachers to the parallel movement in curriculum planning of "designing backwards," that is, planning what is taught based on the desired student outcomes rather than focusing on the structure of the subject. The authors define the outcome of K-12 education as "understanding," composed of six properties. "When we truly understand, we can explain . . . interpret . . . apply . . . have perspective . . . empathize . . . [and] have self-knowledge." They illustrate how curriculum developed to foster these qualities and how appropriate teaching strategies could lead to assessments that demonstrate evidence for students' increased understanding. As in his previous books, Wiggins provides templates and other design tools to support practitioners' "backward design" efforts. Authentic assessments are only valuable when coupled with less didactic and more constructivist teaching. This volume provides both theory and examples for teachers to connect these two domains. The extensive references will interest more academic readers. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate students; practitioners. G. E. Hein; Lesley College