An overview of good instructional development:

In a nutshell, the backwards process

Essential Questions

In writing curriculum or developing instructional tasks the following need to be considered. If you use the metaphor of those mylar pictures in textbooks that showed the varied layers of topography, or parts of the human anatomy, then writing curriculum is a similar process it is like developing a series of layers until it becomes a whole picture.  

McTighe and Wiggins in Understanding by Design suggest that in crafting educational experiences one determines:

• Stage 1. What is worthy and requiring of understanding?
• Stage 2. What is evidence of understanding?
• Stage 3. What learning experiences and teaching promote understanding, interest, and excellence?

I suggest a little different sequence as their questions should be combined with your vision of your exiting learners and reflective end evaluations of all teaching experiences. In essence, good curriculum and course development begin with as series of hard sifting and sorting sessions. 

 Wilson's additions - Step 1: Major question that should direct all of your instruction: What is your vision of your learners at the end of their contact with you?

Crafting a vision of your learners at the end of their contact with you. In creating this vision keep in mind:

1. All instruction should be measured against:

• what you know about your learners,
• how are the information, processes, and/or skills you are going to teach relevant or important to both the understanding and perpetuation of your discipline,
• how the information is relevant or important to the learners themselves and their futures.

2. Learn to keep abreast of generational profiles, social and cultural trends, and demographics which will enable you to better contextualize information and learning experiences so that they are meaningful and connected to learners lives and backgrounds.

3. Become familiar (please notice I did not say expert) with things like the latest innovations instructional technology and media, learning styles, and what neuroscience tells us about how the brain actually learns and retains information so that you can construct effective instructional experiences.

4. Too, it is important to consider what vision you hold of what the learners will look like after they have contact with you. Create a well-defined vision of your learners at the end of their contact with you and then gear instruction toward that vision.

5. Do your learners have visions of themselves? Older students often have future visions of themselves. Have you spoken with them about how they see themselves in the future? What do they want to be or do, and then try  melding your visions and theirs ?

These types of questions should be asked in forming your end vision of your learners:

• Specifically, what skills will they have?
• What will they be able to do, and at what level of mastery?
• What will they know and understand?
• How will they have changed? How will their thinking, feelings, or physical movement or abilities have changed?

• What is your image of the learners? Are they active or passive participants in the learning process?
• What expectations do you have of entering learners? (pre-assess)
• What awareness do you have of the culture and history of your learners?
• How do students learn best?
• What instructional techniques and models work well and fit your content and your types of learners best?

Step 2: Determine what is worthy of teaching and learning.

Some of the following have been adapted or modified from McTighe and Wiggins, and these questions should help in selecting and crafting educational experiences. One needs to determine:

• What information is worth knowing?

• What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (procedures) will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results?

• What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills?

• What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals?

• What is worthy and requiring of understanding?

• What learning and content promotes not only understanding, but interest, and excellence?
• What is enduring and/ or at the heart of the discipline/position?
• What needs uncoverage?
• What learning experiences and content are potentially engaging?
• What is evidence of understanding?
• What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals?
• Is the overall design coherent and effective?

Select filters that will help you decide what understandings (content, processes, and skills) and information to select.

They should:

• Offer potential for engaging [inspiring or challenging] students

• Represent a big idea having enduring value beyond the classroom
• Reside at the heart of the discipline (involve doing the subject)
• Require uncoverage (abstract or often misunderstood ideas).

[Note: To the uncoverage concept I would add ideas or concepts that are in flux, in the process of changing or becoming -- especially if changes are due to new discoveries, findings, information, research, or areas where ideas are being fully synthesized into new frameworks or theories. L.Wilson]

Step 3: What is evidence of understanding how will you evaluate students progressions toward your vision?

Diagram from Wiggins and McTighe

Step 4: Select instructional strategies, experiences and methods of delivery.

Wilson's addition Step 5: Reflect, evaluate, refine and revise assumptions, content, and instructional methods.

Short form:

1. Create vision of student

2. Identify Ends - Instructional ends should be part of your vision of the learner, or what you envision for the learner as he/she leaves your realm of influence. Specifically, what do you want him/her to know and retain. What should they understand and be able to do? Stated ends may involve such things as state, national, or professional standards, or specified district benchmarks or aims. These may provide a framework for culling content and sifting it into tiered or prioritized layers.

Knowledge, content, skills, or processes that are:

• enduring
• worth being familiar with
• at the heart of a discipline
• important to know
• engaging and motivating
• highly relevant to students- futures
• needing uncoverage "

(list above from McTighe and Wiggins, Understanding by Design, ASCD)

Please remember just because materials are in a textbook, they still may not meet these tests, nor may they be important enough for your students to know and understand! Use your professional judgment and your districts curriculum to make these determinations.

B. Expand or recombine - Can specified ends be broken down into smaller pieces (such as general knowledge, specific skills and performances, or observed behavioral objectives), or compressed, integrated with other subject areas, or combined into a comprehensive problem, simulations, or self-directed investigation?

C. Determine acceptable evidence -

1. What evidence will prove that students have mastered the objectives or completed the problem?
2. What will they, or should they, be able to do to give evidence of mastery?
3. Can these skills or this evidence be placed in a graduated rubric that has clearly stated parameters for each level of gradation (i.e. unacceptable, acceptable, exemplary, or at introductory, practiced, or mastered levels?

D. Plan instructional methods and procedures -

1. Plan means of instruction that match all of the above.
2. Choose teaching models that are directly related to what you want to do. In doing this it is important to consider evidence of best practice, effectiveness of chosen methodology, recent research on learning and retention, and an array models of instruction.
3. Re-evaluate developed curricula in light of students progress and understanding revising portions and tasks where needed. This must be done at regular intervals to assure that the delivered instruction matches the intended curriculum.
 

Based on McTighe and Wiggins, Understanding by Design, ASCD and Wilson's prioritizing objectives pages.
 

Many other sites have portions of the book or summaries of the ideas.

Chapter 4 - The Six facets of Understanding  

for original materials added copyright Wilson, L. (2002, 2005)