It is certainly true that assessments and evaluations have to be oriented for real understanding and not only aimed to evaluate knowledge. But what is the difference between these concepts? Well, most of the time understanding and Knowledge are used as synonyms and confused by teachers and students. However, it is very important to have clear these concepts, when evaluating. First of all we must be aware that knowledge refers to facts, information or specifics details about a topic, whereas understanding is a mental construct made by human brain to make sense of different kind of knowledge. Therefore, we can say that Knowledge and understanding are closely related but they are not the same.
Understanding includes to know how something occurs or operates, what are the consequences and how to resolve problems in different contexts. In other words, understanding requires the ability to transfer or actively do , justify and applying an specific knowledge. Therefore, education for understanding asks to examine prior knowledge. Well, as you have experienced, the problem starts when teachers are obligated to cover a demanded content and students don´t have the same prior knowledge. We must spend time to level our students and we don´t have enough time to cover the annual contents. So, in your opinion what is better?
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Chapter 1: Backward Design
A standard definition provided by Oxford English Dictionary states that Design as a verb is –To have purposes and intentions; to plan and execute - Well, despite of this short description, most of you must agree that designing is a complex task.
First of all, if we do not know our student’s needs and types of learning, it is very hard start planning and/or design curricula.(That is a real problem when you are a new teacher or when you don´t have a partner) Overcoming this problem , the First Stage of Backward Design is having clear our purposes and priorities (-Identify desired results-) , that is to say, review curriculum expectations (Nationals or privates), making sure what our learners are able to do , what content deserves to be taught, among others.
The Second Stage is how we prove that every unit we want to teach is going to be attained and reached by the students, that means determining acceptable evidence of the learning process.
And finally the Third and the most substantial Stage for me is planning learning experiences and instructions. At this point, we must take into account several considerations, such as processes, procedures and strategies, but mainly if our activities have real purposes or are merely done for engage students (activity-based instead results-based). We must be careful because engagement is necessary but not sufficient; students have to go beyond that, they have to work for real understanding. Another issue to consider at this stage is that most of our colleges , including me sometimes, tend to “cover” the activities the course books have instead of picking up only the most suitable for our students or the most significant for them. That happens, because most of the time we do not have enough time to do think about it or because our school community demands it. In summary Backward Design deals with the coherence among desired results, developing students’ skills, and finally teaching and learning experiences to reach a better understanding.
First of all, if we do not know our student’s needs and types of learning, it is very hard start planning and/or design curricula.(That is a real problem when you are a new teacher or when you don´t have a partner) Overcoming this problem , the First Stage of Backward Design is having clear our purposes and priorities (-Identify desired results-) , that is to say, review curriculum expectations (Nationals or privates), making sure what our learners are able to do , what content deserves to be taught, among others.
The Second Stage is how we prove that every unit we want to teach is going to be attained and reached by the students, that means determining acceptable evidence of the learning process.
And finally the Third and the most substantial Stage for me is planning learning experiences and instructions. At this point, we must take into account several considerations, such as processes, procedures and strategies, but mainly if our activities have real purposes or are merely done for engage students (activity-based instead results-based). We must be careful because engagement is necessary but not sufficient; students have to go beyond that, they have to work for real understanding. Another issue to consider at this stage is that most of our colleges , including me sometimes, tend to “cover” the activities the course books have instead of picking up only the most suitable for our students or the most significant for them. That happens, because most of the time we do not have enough time to do think about it or because our school community demands it. In summary Backward Design deals with the coherence among desired results, developing students’ skills, and finally teaching and learning experiences to reach a better understanding.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
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