Teaching & Learning Strategies
To Try - Backwards Design
Backwards design asks teachers to about the purpose of the course they are teaching. Or to keep the end in mind. Many teachers and lecturers take a content focussed approach and structure their course around the textbook, their favourite topics or successful lessons. They assume that while covering this content, the desired results will be met.
Backward design is premised on the idea that planning starts with a focus on the end. It’s a method for designing a curriculum that involves setting goals before choosing instructional methods and forms of assessment. It’s not a not a philosophy of teaching, nor an approach to teaching and learning. It's a planning framework for arranging a curriculum. It’s a way of asking “what should the student be able to accomplish?” and “what plans have I made to get them there?”
Backward design of curriculum typically involves three stages:
- Identify the desired results (big ideas and skills)
- Determine acceptable levels of evidence that support that the desired results have occurred (culminating assessment tasks)
- Design activities that will make desired results happen (learning events)
Stage 1—Identify Desired Results - What should students know, understand, and be able to do?
“Content tyranny” describes the excess of content than can reasonably be included in a course within the limited amount of available time. This first stage in the design process calls for choices about priorities and goals. This is where we consider our what we want students to be able to accomplish and review curriculum expectations.
Learning priorities are established by long-term goals—what it is we want students, in the end, to be able to do with what they have learned. Stage 1 focuses on “learning outcomes.” Important knowledge and skill objectives, targeted by established standards, are also identified in Stage 1.
Stage 2 – Evidence - How will we know if students have achieved the desired results?
A backwards designer must consider in advance the assessment evidence needed to document and validate that the targeted learning has been achieved. Curriculum planners must think like assessors before designing specific units and lessons. There are two broad types of assessment—performance tasks and other evidence. The performance tasks ask students to apply their learning to a new and authentic situation as means of assessing their understanding and ability to transfer their learning.
When someone truly understands, they
- Can explain concepts, principles, and processes by putting it their own words, teaching it to others, justifying their answers, and showing their reasoning.
- Can interpret by making sense of data, text, and experience through images, analogies, stories, and models.
- Can apply by effectively using and adapting what they know in new and complex contexts.
- Demonstrate perspective by seeing the big picture and recognizing different points of view.
- Display empathy by perceiving sensitively and walking in someone else’s shoes.
- Have self-knowledge by showing meta-cognitive awareness, using productive habits of mind, and reflecting on the meaning of the learning and experience.
Stage 3—Plan Learning - how will we support students as they come to understand important ideas and processes?
Too often, teaching focuses primarily on presenting information or modeling basic skills for acquisition without extending the lessons to help students make meaning or transfer the learning. In Stage 3 of backward design, teachers plan for understanding and give students numerous opportunities to draw inferences and make generalizations for themselves (with teacher support).
Understanding cannot simply be told; the student has to actively construct meaning (or misconceptions and forgetfulness will ensue). Teaching for transfer means that students are given opportunities to apply their learning to new situations and receive timely feedback on their performance to help them improve. Thus, the teacher’s role expands from solely a “sage on the stage” to a facilitator of meaning making and a coach giving feedback and advice about how to use content effectively.
Many lecturers and teachers are used to systems and structures like the 45 minute lecture, schedule or timetable to structure their work Backwards design asks these lecturers and teachers to figure out how they will organize the exposition of their subject. Much like a good coach can see the big picture, uses routines to identify what a team can do and then uses drills to help them become skilled in a specific ability, the backwards designer
- considers desired performances of his or her students first,
- thinks about what data can be collected to show that the end goal has been achieved and
- then arranges learning activities and resources to address the performance goals