View the Syllabus
Understanding Goals for the Course In this course you will develop understanding of the following:
- What is understanding, and how does it develop? (We'll examine how your current planning and instruction support students' developing understanding and how you can do that more deliberately and systematically.)
- What is the Teaching for Understanding Framework, why and when is it useful, and how can we use it? (We'll explore the elements of the Teaching for Understanding Framework and how they inter-relate, and we'll examine ways the framework supports teachers in planning, revising, and reviewing instruction so it better helps students develop genuine understanding of important content.)
- 3. How can we create and sustain a professional education community online that supports our own developing understanding? (We'll consider ways to work supportively and effectively in this online environment, how to exploit the resources it offers, and surface possible ways it models useful systems that can help us design ongoing professional learning in face-to-face and other online contexts.)
Course Sessions
Orientation Session The Orientation introduces the resources available in the course. Participants meet the course instructional team, course colleagues, and the WIDE technical support team. We also introduce the course environment and the pedagogical framework that structures the course and is its central focus: Teaching for Understanding (TfU).
Session 1: Understanding: What Is It? In this session, participants compare their current perceptions of understanding with a 'performance view.' We reflect together on how such views shape our teaching and learning everyday.
Session 2: Teaching for Understanding: Framing Our Work In this session, we explore the Teaching for Understanding Framework as a tool for instructional planning and revision that continually reorients attention back to understanding. The framework is comprised of four key elements that help educators to shape instruction so that it helps students learn for understanding. We will reflect on and examine in some depth one of the four elements, Performances of Understanding.
Session 3: Designing Instruction for Understanding: Topics and Goals In this session, we probe two more elements of the Teaching for Understanding Framework in detail: Generative Topics and Understanding Goals. Participants will select a unit/lesson from their own teaching to create or revise throughout the rest of the course by using the TfU Framework.
Session 4: Digging Deeper into Disciplinary Understanding In this session, we take another look at Understanding Goals and Performances of Understanding. Assignments ask you to revise your goals using the Dimensions of Understanding Framework, and to draft Performances of Understanding ? performances for the beginning, middle, and end of the unit. You will use the Reflection Guide this session to assess developing understanding of TfU as applied to the lesson/unit you have chosen to reversion.
Session 5: Checking Understanding as It Develops In this session, we suggest ways to refine your curriculum design further using TfU. We look at ways to engage every student and to build in more opportunities for student thinking (the main tool for building understanding). You will also start to work more with Ongoing Assessment. Participants post their draft projects and respond to each others' designs to consider how the TfU elements work together to promote student understanding.
Session 6: Looking Back And Looking ahead In this session, you will revisit Performances of Understanding to find ways to more deeply engage all your students in understanding. You will make final revisions to your unit, respond to a colleagues' unit, and do a summative reflection of your learning in the course.
In each session participants take on the following assignments: - read new material on the course website in the 'Session Note'
- complete readings and other assignments
- post responses to assignments in the online course discussion
- receive response to work from coaches and online colleagues
- respond to online colleagues
Professional Development Credit
For those interested in earning professional development points/units/credits, a certificate for up to 42 hours will be issued upon completion of the course, if all the assignments have been completed -- approximately 7 hours per session.
Three additional hours may be earned by completing one or more of the following assessments, for a total of 45 participation hours:
- midterm course evaluation (1 hour)
- final course evaluation (2 hours)
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