Transcript What is understanding?

For
Understanding
Sona Sargsyan
What is understanding?
•Understanding is a matter of being able to carry out a
variety of flexible performances concerning the topic
taught.
 Learning facts can be a crucial backdrop to learning
for understanding, but learning facts is not learning
for understanding.
Understanding shows its face when
people can think and act flexibly
around what they know. In contrast,
when a learner cannot go beyond rote
and routine thought and action,
this signals lack of understanding.
“ Teaching for Understanding is an Apply
for Education”.
David Perkins
(Senior Associate at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education)
Nowadays teachers are providing
The students the wrong apple.
The apple of knowledge isn’t the
apple that truly nourishes. We need
the apple of understanding.
Questions
 What shall we teach?
 What is worth understanding?
 How shall we teach for understanding?
 How can students and teacher know what students
understand and how students can develop deeper
understanding?
What's the Teaching for Understanding
Framework?
The Teaching for Understanding framework,
developed in a research project at Project Zero
during the early nineties.
David Perkins – co-director of Harvard Project Zerohas called "four cornerstones of pedagogy" with four
elements of planning and instruction “The Four
Elements of the Teaching for Understanding
Framework (TfU)”.
The four elements of
the TfU.
1) Generative Topics
2) Understanding Goals
3) Understanding Performances
4) Ongoing Assessment
1. Generative Topics
Generative topics have several key features:
 They are central to one or more disciplines or domains.
 They are interesting and accessible to students.
 They have multiple connections to students' experiences
both in and out of school
 They are interesting to the teacher.
e.g.
It is easier to teach for understanding about the Boston Tea
Party than about colonial tax policies, because the Boston
Tea Party dramatizes issues around colonial tax policies.
2. Understanding Goals
Unit-Long
Identifies specific goal for the
specific topic
•What will students understand?
•What will they appreciate?
•Where will they use the obtained
knowledge?
Year-Long
Year-Long / Overarching
Understanding Goal are called
"throughlines”.
Each of the individual units makes
up the course would have
understanding goals that related
closely to the overarching
understanding goals.
• What will the students take away
from my class?
3. Understanding Performances
Understanding performances are the heart of
developing understanding and are linked closely to
understanding goals.
Students should be engaged in performances (hold a
good conversation, improvise jazz, service-learning
than multiplication table) that demonstrate
understanding from the beginning to the end of the
unit or course.
Learning facts can be a crucial backdrop to learning
for understanding, but learning facts is not learning
for understanding.
4. Ongoing Assessment
Criteria
Self-Evaluation
Students
need
Feedback
Reflection
TFU Will……….
 Guide and allow room for personal expression
 Help you and your students to achieve goals
 Help your students to understand
 Help your students to be knowledgeable and skillful
 Help you in becoming a
NUMBER
1 TEACHER
References
1. URL: http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/tfu/info3.cfm
2. URL: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/understanding/
front_understanding.htm
3. URL: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/understanding/
unger.htm
4. URL: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/Research/TfU.htm
5. URL: http://www.weac.org/News_and_Publications/
education_news/1996-1997/under.aspx
6. URL: http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/
workshops/teachingforunderstanding.html
7. URL: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/understanding
/neal.htm