Stuart+Stephenson

Response Journal #1

Hi, my name is Stuart Stephenson. I'm a New Zealand mathematics teacher, currently teaching IB mathematics at the American International School - Riyadh. This is my fifth year in Riyadh and my 32nd year of teaching. I first heard about UbD six or seven years ago at a job fair. The recruiters for a school in Taiwan were broadcasting it as the latest initiative in their school. I did some reading about it after that to try and find out what all the fuss was about. Since then I have come across the model from time to time and had a little more exposure to the ideas, but I am still undecided about whether there is genuinely something new there or whether it is simply good practice and common sense cunningly dressed up in a saleable package. I am hoping that the course will help me make up my mind. The broader question of whether or not an understanding of curriculum design is helpful to me as a teacher and helpful to my students is an interesting one. I think that it is important for me to know how and where what I am teaching fits into the bigger picture of the education my students are receiving. The better my understanding of this, the more able I am to help the students make links between what they are learning in my class, what the already know and what they are learning in their other subjects.

Response Journal #2

Knowledge Alive - David Perkins

The author's view is that "education is not just about acquiring knowledge, but about learning how to do significant things with what you know". The knowledge arts are the set of skills necessary to be able to do this. He considers that schools have not been good at developing the knowledge arts in their students. Schools have been mildly successful at teaching students to communicate, but not very good at getting students to create, organize or act on knowledge. I agree with his view of the current situation in schools. We make the occasional token effort to try and connect students' learning to the world outside the classroom but for the most part we persevere with trying to stuff as much knowledge into our students as they can bear. If we are to try and change this approach and make a better job of teaching the knowledge arts, the curriculum would have to be designed to give students the opportunity to practice the knowledge arts.

Preparing for Today and Tomorrow - Elliot W. Eisner

In Eisner's view, schools should teach students judgement, critical thinking, meaningful literacy, collaboration and service through an education process that is genuinely meaningful to students and challenges them with ideas and problems that are both interesting and intellectually demanding of them. The 'hoop jumping' that he writes about arises from the pressure on students to get good grades to move on to the next level (college or university) to the extent that the grade is all important and the knowledge and process are set aside. i think that there is also pressure from society for schools to be conservative in their approach and also a slowness of the curriculum / education system to react to change. in my mathematics teaching at present I am able to focus on some critical thinking, some exercise of judgement and some collaboration, but I would consider it a long way from eisner's ideal.

Response Journal #3

Constructivism

The proponents of constructivism claim a number of benefits. Constructivism stimulates and engages students by making them actively involved in their learning rather than merely listening passively, by making the learning activities part of the real world and related to the students' own knowledge and questions and by making classrooms that encourage collaboration, fostering social skills and exchange of ideas. It is also claimed that by concentrating on learning how to think and understand rather than simply rote learning and by including students' contributions to their own learning, students are more likely to retain their new knowledge and transfer it to other settings. Constructivism certainly alerts teachers to the function of prior learning and existing concepts held by students in the process of new learning. It also stresses the importance of understanding as a goal and fosters student engagement in lessons. However, critics say that there is very little empirical evidence to support the constructivist claim that people "learn by doing", especially for novice learners. Student engagement in an activity does not always equal learning and it would be unwise to exclude the direct teaching of basic skills totally. One model of learning that I looked at suggested that constructivist strategies may be important at particular stages of learning rather than generally applicable to all stages of learning and proposed three stages: initial knowledge, where direct teaching is appropriate; advanced knowledge and expertise, where practical application of constructivist principles may be used.

Response Journal #4

Powerful Learning - Ron Brandt

As I read about Brandt's conditions for powerful learning I was reflecting on the differences between my son's approach to learning chemistry and his approach to playing "World of Warcraft", a game where cooperation is the only way to progress. Of the ten conditions listed in Brandt's article, the only one not present in my son's WoW experience was probably the experience of a positive emotional climate as his parents tried to get him to cut down on his game playing and spend more time on his chemistry. In an article in Prospect Magazine, a British civil servant who had spent up to 70 hours a week playing WoW, spoke of what he had gained from his playing: "In Warcraft I've developed confidence; a lack of fear about entering difficult situations; I've enhanced my presentation skills and debating. then there are more subtle things: judging people's intentions from conversations, learning to tell people what they want to hear. I am certainly more manipulative, more Machiavellian. I love being in charge of a group of people, leading them to succeed in a task." ('Rage against the machines' Prospect Magazine issue 147 June 2008). Further on in the article a leading game programmer comments that computer games teach and people don't even notice that they are being taught because they are having too much fun. So can the conditions for powerful learning exist in the classroom as well as they can in a game playing situation? I certainly teach material that I struggle to answer the question "when am I going to use this?" about, so I think it unlikely that everything is going to be personally meaningful to all students at all times. What students learn can be challenging for them, appropriate for their developmental level, built on what they already know and they can have some choice and control over how they learn. Whether they accept the challenge and whether they feel in control are very individual reactions to the institution they find themselves in. In the classroom the students have opportunities for social interaction, they get helpful feedback (formative assessment), they acquire and use strategies that are modelled for them by the teacher, and for the most part they experience a positive emotional climate in a supportive environment. Why aren't we more successful then? I think that I can establish most of these conditions in my classroom most of the time - but I am not at all sure that what I am teaching is personally meaningful to my students.

Response Journal #5

If teachers begin with textbooks isn't it because the textbook writers have begun writing with the desired results (goals and standards) in front of them? (Not that I'm advocating the textbook as anything more than a resource.) The writers of the mathematics textbooks I use may even have then "determined the acceptable evidence", i.e written the assessments that come with the teacher's pack, before moving on to write the "lessons" and practice problems. Would it be OK to start with the textbook if it was certified as having been written using the principles of backwards design? The main drawback of the textbook is that it is a "one size fits all" approach and as such is very inflexible (as well as discouraging teacher thought by providing a wealth of support material.) I can adjust my teaching to my students' knowledge and experience, scaffold their learning, adapt the language used, and introduce concepts in a variety of ways to enhance learning and help students construct meaning. In doing this I may even use some "favored lessons and time-honored activities" - all without guilt because, after all, these things were not just dreamed up to fill in the day. However, it is a useful activity to examine our practices under a different light and the backward design process, particularly with its second stage of determining acceptable evidence before planning the learning experiences and instruction, seems a useful model to conduct this examination. It makes sense to know where you want to go in a lesson before you start it, and it makes sense to consider how you will know if you have got there or not before you start out. So in the end I have to agree that the best lesson and unit designs are "backwards".,

Response Journal #6

When I was at High School I was a very successful mathematics student, but I always regarded myself as an able technician rather than a math whiz. I could look at examples from the teacher and from the textbook and use the principles and processes to solve other, similar problems. When I began teaching mathematics I began to understand more of why things were the way they were and more of the connections. It was a great feeling to have the light bulb go off in my head as I was explaining something to a 9th grade student and think "aaah - that's why that works like that". I could "know' and 'do' but I certainly didn't always 'understand'. However, these days when one of my students says "I don't understand any of this",I am suspicious about what the student actually means and have to probe more before deciding how to approach the problem. In simple terms I guess that knowing and doing is what is necessary to complete the practice problems for a concept, but understanding is what is necessary to transfer the use of the concept to a new and unfamiliar situation. When I asked one of my students how she could tell whether she understood something or merely knew and could do it she answered straight away that it was when she could explain it to someone else.