12 June 2007

Today I was looking at Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. I've read it before but I was going back through it for the first time in a few months. Somewhere in it they referenced a book by Caswell and Campbell. They included a quote about how many aims, in Caswell and Campbell's words, that teachers had to try and accomplish in each class. The basic message was that there were incredible amounts. Too many by a factor of 10 to truly accomplish. The kicker was in the line after the quote where they gave the date of publication. (I'll give you a clue thier first names were Hollis and Doak.) It was from a popular curriculum guidebook from 1935.

I looked up the book on the online library questia.com to see what it was all about. It runs 600 pages and instructs how to set up a curriculum and how to assess that curriculum. If you showed someone in 2007 the table of contents they could easily think it was a modern book. I read some selections and quickly found that this book was not off the mark in any way. Yes it had some very outdated sections but at its core it was as sound as any modern work on the subject.

A common complaint came to mind. When I explain some new strategy DI, formative assessment, UbD there is always someone in the room who says, "Oh yeah, this is just like ____. Why do we have to do this all over again we did it in 1983." I finally came to truly understand the cyclical nature that is needed and intentional in curriculum design and reform. Teaching by its very nature requires that we do something, assess whether it worked and then modify for the next time around. I need to do more research to back this up but the history of education is bound to work the same way. In education we keep what worked and drop what did not. This applies to the day to day lesson and to an entire array of curriculum. Each year we modify. Each decade. The process must be continual or it won't work.

When I looked at the 1935 book I saw aspects of understanding by design in it. I saw aspects of many of the great things that I have learned from teachers like Anne Davies, Tom Guskey, Jane Bailey, Bob Marzano and Ken O'Connor just to name a few. My point is that this is necessary. When we see a new approach that looks similar to an old one that we have heard of before we should say, "Yes, I see it." We should not be disheartened by this revelation we should be excited by it and we should use what we already know to make the process better.

And the process will continue beyond understanding by design. Fifteen years from now we will be modifying our curriculum again. But should we want it any other way? Shouldn't we be excited about the chance to continually try to become better at doing what we do, continuing to teach students in the best way possible?