School+Reform+by+Design

Jay McTighe
 * School Reform by Design**

Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement (book he and Grant Wiggins wrote) Part 1: A Vision of Schooling Part 2: A Plan for Schooling by Design

What would a school or district look like if they were using the principles of UbD?

Used a Three Minute Pause to reflect, share, and summarize

Chapter 1: What is the Mission of Schooling? Chapter 2: What Should Curriculum Accomplish? Chapter 8: How should backward design apply to school reform?

Think about school reform as not unlike home remodeling. It is a lot of work and can be messy, but if it well-planned, then we have a nicer place to live. People are still living in the house, but you have a plan that is leading you.

(Analogy—sailboats usually have keels (the mission serves as the keel of the school)—the keel provides stability—it buffers against the effects of string winds and currents—helps you stay of course. The learning principles are analogous to the sails and rudder—they guide needed adjustments, they harness and make use of strong winds, help you keep on course)
 * Mission & Philosophy is the foundation—has to be known and embraced by stakeholders
 * Is the mission operating? Would ramdomly sampled staff know the mission and be able to site examples of it in operation?
 * Quality of success is determined by the quality of achieving the mission
 * Mission-building exercise—picture the graduate—try to envision the type of person we wish to develop. What skills and characteristics do we want them to have?
 * Six Clusters of competence—supported by Bill and Melinda Gates (list of competencies of what students should be like
 * Mission should be active and inform our work
 * Among the mission elements—should help students come to understand important ideas and equip students to transfer their learning both within and outside of school—and—desired accomplishments transcend academic learning
 * Learning Principles is also foundation—helps to depersonalize actions and lead decisions
 * Explicit adoption of learning principles
 * They developed a set of principles in the book from APA, cognitive psychology—don’t say you have use their set—they are a guide
 * Adopt, adapt, or develop an explicit set of learning principles and beliefs about learning
 * Encourage staff endorsement and sign off
 * Use the principles as touchstones for education
 * Examples
 * The goal of learning is fluent and flexible transfer—effective use of knowledge and skill
 * Transfer depends upon understanding the big ideas that connect otherwise-isolated facts, skills and experiences
 * Learners need clear priorities, an understanding of how goals are best achieved and helpful feedback in order to produce quality work
 * All learning-related work in schools should be reviewed against clear, valid, and public standards
 * Practical Example: take a set of already-created learning principles, put in on a poster, and had participants to use dots to say what principles they thought were most important. Could also post revisions and additions
 * Agreed-upon learning principles function as criteria for de-personalizing educational conversations, decisions, and actions.
 * Educators can be thin-skinned; we become defensive, we need to take feedback and use it to get better—the learning principles provide a vehicle to depersonalize our decisions. (**Nothing personal**) March 2006—Educational Leaderswhip


 * Next level is a robust curriculum and assessment system
 * Ten Important elements to include: To what extent do we have a coherent curriculum from the learner’s point of view?
 * Curriculum philosophy and learning principles
 * K-12 content standards, understandings are essential questions (unpack the big ideas from the curriculum to help focus) (standards-based) If we are clear about the understandings of what we want students to know then we can plan backwards
 * Supports what we know about learning and cognition—experts organize ideas around big ideas; they don’t memorize a list of facts
 * County took curriculum and organized it by big ideas and essential questions (Montgomery County, Maryland)
 * Program and course-level maps (UbD brings forth the essential understandings and questions, units, and key skills
 * Cornerstone Assessment
 * Assessment helps distinguish between teaching and learning
 * Design assessments before you design lessons and activities
 * More authentic assessments which require transfer of knowledge (opportunities for “doing the subject”)
 * Sideline drills equip us for playing the game (authentic)—we need both
 * Common rubrics
 * Anchors
 * Learning Activities, teaching strategies, resources,
 * Diagnostic and formative assessments
 * Differentiation
 * Troubleshooting guide


 * Instructional programs and practices comes next—grounded by mission, learning principles, and


 * Peronnel-hiring, appraisal, development is next—staff development is nested on the needs of student achievement


 * Policies, structures, governance, and resource allocations is at the top

Use backwards design Apply strategic principles
 * Two Process Elements:**