Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement

298 Pages·2007·2.62 MB·English

by  Grant Wiggins

EDUCATION
Why, despite years of trying, have efforts to achieve lasting, effective
school reform fallen short? What curricular and policy elements must
be in place to move forward? How should the roles of teachers and
education leaders be defi ned to best support the point of school?
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and other questions in
Schooling by Design. Building on the premise of Understanding by Design,
their acclaimed framework for curriculum, instruction, and assessment,
the authors present a compelling argument for using the same approach
to reach a grand goal: the reform of schooling as a whole. In their view,
reform rests on six pillars:
• A relentless focus on the long-term mission of school, enabling
learners to demonstrate understanding and mature habits of mind;
• A curriculum and assessment framework that honors the mission
and ensures that content “coverage” is no longer the accepted
Browse excerpts
approach to instruction;
• A set of principles of learning that support all decisions about
pedagogy and planning; from ASCD books:
• Structures, policies, job descriptions, practices, and use of
resources consistent with mission and learning principles; www.ascd.org/books
• An overall strategy that includes ongoing feedback and adjustment;
and
• A set of tactics linked to strategy, including a planning process that
uses backward design to accomplish the key work of reform. $30.95 U.S.
Practical, insightful, and provocative, Schooling by Design elaborates on
each of these elements and presents educators with both the rationale
and the methodology for closing the gap between what we say we
want from school and what school actually delivers—for turning
vision into reality.
ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT • ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA USA
SchoolingByDesignTP:Layout 1 6/15/07 1:18 PM Page i
ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
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PAPERBACKISBN: 978-1-4166-0580-5 ASCD product #107018 s7/07
Also available as an e-book through ebrary, netLibrary, and many online booksellers (see Books in Print for
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiggins, Grant P., 1950–
Schooling by design : mission, action, and achievement / Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4166-0580-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Education—United States—Aims and objectives.
2. Educational change—United States. 3. Curriculum planning—United States. I. McTighe, Jay. II. Title.
LA217.2.W53 2007
370.1—dc22 2007004394
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part I. A Vision of Schooling
1. What Is the Mission of Schooling? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2. What Should Curriculum Accomplish? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3. How Should Curriculum Be Re-Formed?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4. How Should Teaching Be Appropriately Depersonalized?. . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5. What Is the Teacher’s Job When Teaching?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6. What Is the Teacher’s Job When Not Teaching? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
7. What Is the Job of an Academic Leader?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Part II. A Plan for Schooling by Design
8. How Should Backward Design Apply to School Reform? . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
9. What Are the Desired Results of School Reform? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
10. What Evidence Should We Collect? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
11. What Actions Should We Plan? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
12. What Habits Must We Confront? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
About the Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Acknowledgments
Many individuals, far too numerous to mention, have helped us develop and refine
the ideas and materials in this book. Nonetheless, a few are deserving of special
acknowledgment.
First, we owe a debt of gratitude to the members of the Understanding by
Design Training Cadre for their eagerly shared wisdom and experience: John Brown,
Ann Cunningham-Morris, Marcella Emberger, Judith Hilton, Everett Kline, Eliza-
beth Rutherford, Elliott Seif, Janie Smith, and Allison Zmuda. We are especially
appreciative for the helpful advice from Allison, John, and Elliott given over the
course of countless hours of review and conversation. They gently but firmly pushed
us beyond an earlier, less effective draft and provided great feedback as we finished.
We offer heartfelt thanks to the thousands of educators with whom we have
worked and whose questions, struggles, suggestions, and creative approaches helped
the ideas in this book develop and mature. More specifically, we wish to highlight
a few individuals: Frank Champine, Susan Clayton, Alan Dichter, Pamela Francis,
Elaine Gorman, Andy Greene, Peter Heaney, Dorothy Katauskus, Marcia Kramer,
Ann Lewis, Kim Marshall, Hilde McGeehan, Ron Thomas, Diane VanAusdall, and
Mark Wise were among many of our most helpful colleagues. Andy deserves special
thanks for his constant willingness to both react to and contribute materials in spite
of his endless duties as principal of Candlewood Middle School.
Indeed, whatever strengths educators recognize in this book, they are due to
the many insights and practical tools that evolved as a result of our work with
numerous schools and districts. Although it would be impossible to reference them
all, we salute the following contributors of the practical examples and tools found
in this book: Baltimore County Public Schools (MD), Candlewood Middle School
(NY), Grand Island Public Schools (NE), Greece Central Schools (NY), Hinsdale
Township High School District 86 (IL), Montgomery County Public Schools (MD),
Nanuet Public Schools (NY), New Hope–Solebury School District (PA), District #9
iv
Acknowledgments
in New York City, St. Charles Community Schools (IL), St. Tammany Parish Schools
(LA), State College Area School District (PA), Tewksbury Schools (NJ), Virginia Beach
City Public Schools (VA), and West Windsor–Plainsboro Schools (NJ).
Schooling by Designwould never have come about had it not been for the sup-
port provided by Ann Cunningham-Morris at ASCD. Ann helped to craft the initial
vision of Schooling by Design and sustain its evolution over the past several years.
We are also thankful to Darcie Russell and her editorial colleagues for their
helpful queries, suggestions, and shepherding of a rough draft to a polished publi-
cation. Finally, we once again thank our families for tolerating the endless phone
calls, trips back and forth between Maryland and New Jersey, and hours spent on
the road using and refining these materials. Grant is especially grateful to Denise for
her substantive contributions and edits to the first four chapters, her tolerance of his
endless doubts and brainstorms, and her cheerful willingness to help him think
through or clarify key issues in the book. We trust that Daisy, Denise, and all the kids—
once again—understand.
v

Introduction
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan,
but also believe.
—Anatole France
Volumes have been written on education and school reform. So what do we offer that
is fresh and perhaps useful? Simply put, a clear and powerful conception of a
mission-driven approach to schooling and a practical strategy for realizing that
mission. Although many people have written about mission, few have described
how mission should be honored by informing schooling and its structure. Using
mission to inform schooling and its structures is what we set out to do here.
What is true of school mission? Regardless of the particulars, schooling should
enable learners to achieve worthy intellectual accomplishments, as reflected in
(1) their ability to transfer their learning with understanding to worthy tasks and
(2) their mature habits of mind. What, then, must be true of genuine reform? That
we find and root out the myriad ways in which mission is ignored or overlooked in
day-to-day teaching, and that we derive curriculum, assessment, job descriptions,
and policies “backward” from what the mission requires. Without a constant focus
on teaching that is meant to culminate in meaning and transfer, schooling will likely
remain mired in timeless, unexamined habits and rituals, and limited by incoherent
practices and structures.
Throughout Schooling by Design, we use an architectural analogy: if “schooling”
is an existing building, how should we think about its renovation? We envision a
(re-)building resting upon six pillars:
•A clear and constant focus on the long-term mission of all schooling:
enabling learners to achieve worthy intellectual accomplishment, as reflected in their
ability to transfer their learning with understanding to worthy tasks and in their
habits of mind.
1
Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement
•A curriculum and assessment framework that honors the overall mission as
well as the explicit long-term goals of academic programs, to ensure that content
coverage is no longer the de facto approach to lesson planning and instruction.
•A set of explicit principles of learning and instructional design, based on
research and the wisdom of the profession, to which all decisions about pedagogy
and planning are referred.
•Structures, policies, job descriptions, practices, and use of resources consis-
tent with mission and learning principles.
•An overall strategy of reform centered on the constant exploration of the gap
between the explicit vision of reform versus the current reality of schooling; in other
words, a feedback and adjustment system that is ongoing, timely, and robust enough
to enable all teachers and students to change course en route, as needed, to achieve
the desired results.
•A set of tactics linked to the strategy and a straightforward process of plan-
ning for orchestrating the key work of schooling and school reform “backward” from
the mission and the desired results.
The book offers an explanation of these elements, the rationale for them, and
practical tools and processes for making such renovation focused and feasible. In
short, the book is about getting beyond mere intentions, endless complaints, and
naive dreams. We provide a plan of action that is driven not by vague values or ran-
dom criticisms but by what any legitimate school mission statement implies for the
practice and structure of schooling. We also include a plan for overcoming long-
standing bad habits.
The challenge is not to invent some ideal school that is unmoored from reality
(as many reforms have implied) or to presume that the current core functions of
school are adequate to the task (they aren’t), but rather to build exemplary schooling
“backward” from its long-term goal of making students thoughtful, productive, and
accomplished at worthy tasks. We offer new ideas, yes; but more important, the book
is built upon a commonsense method for clarifying local goals and what they require
of us, and for rooting out the blind spots and habits that run counter to those goals.
The logic is simple: if X is our mission, then what follows for curriculum,
teaching, and school organization? We refer to such engineering from the mission
as “schooling by design.”
The point of education can be captured in a single phrase: worthy accomplish-
ment, achieved by causing thoughtful and effective understanding that enables transfer.
Any education, regardless of content or philosophy, should help learners, right from
the start, to “come to understanding” in two senses: (1) to enable them to constantly
make meaning from their schoolwork and (2) to equip them to apply their learning
2
Introduction
to new situations not only in school but also beyond it—that is, to transfer. Both
goals are worked on now, in the present, not in some distant future after students
have first learned all possible “stuff worth knowing.” When such understanding is
the aim, the habits of mind we most value will be fostered. Thus, schooling should
be judged by what students have genuinely accomplished, not whether they have
become good at “school.” The point of school is to learn in schoolhow to make sense
of learnings in order to lead better lives out of school; to learn now to apply lessons
to later challenges, effectively and thoughtfully.
At the center of the book (literally and figuratively) is thus a plan for reinvent-
ing the key embodiment of schooling—the curriculum—in a way that meets school
goals and undercuts our habit of thinking of “teaching” as “covering content.” To put
it bluntly, the traditional curriculum and the view of teaching attached to it are dys-
functional and have been for centuries. A list of content and activities is not a plan;
marching through material can never ensure habits of mind and genuine ability.
Content mastery is not the ultimate goal of a school; it is a by-product of a success-
ful education. To invoke the architectural analogy, mastering state standards is not
the primary outcome of an educational renovation. The standards are like the build-
ing code that any reform blueprint has to honor, but they are not the blueprint itself.
In short, schooling is random and school change becomes chaotic without a cur-
riculum, assessment, and instructional framework derived from the mission and
grounded in valid learning principles.
From the mission of achieving successful student useof learning, all other edu-
cational practices, policies, and structures must follow. This is the practical impli-
cation of the phrase backward design used throughout the book. Reform must be
guided by a constant focus on the meaning of school mission and the analysis of that
mission into aligned policies, structures, and practices.
Such a declaration about the importance of focusing on understanding and
useful learning may perplex some readers. Of course, you might be thinking, don’t all
educators want students to understand what is taught and to be able to apply what they
have learned in their lives?Well, yes and no. Yes, we saywe value understanding and
the particular habits of mind stated in our various program and mission statements,
but when we look at how curricula are written, what gets assessed locally, and what
happens day in and day out in classrooms, we see that the goals of thoughtfulness,
meaning, and transfer get quickly lost and perpetually postponed so that the basics
of “content” can firstbe taught by the teacher and then be tested on an easily scored
paper-and-pencil assessment. As a result, genuine applications of learning (and the
habits related to them) are all too frequently sacrificed.
Some of the reasons for the lack of constant focus on understanding and trans-
fer are understandable. The textbooks we use reinforce a propensity to cover content
3