Understanding UbD

Friday, 03 June 2011 06:29

Written by Louie C. Montemar

Less projected than the K+12 reform thrust of DepEd is another educational approach that is making some of my teacher friends raise their eyebrows and groan: “Ano na naman ito?”

It’s called Understanding by Design or simply, UbD.

This approach was first introduced in the US 1998 by educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Reports claim that it “has since been successfully implemented across thousands of educational institutions around the world.”

So here we are again, just like in the case of K+12, copying international practice and thus putatively help ensure our global competitiveness, being gaya-gaya... puto maya. Hordes of our teachers have undergone initial trainings on this approach which the inventors themselves, Wiggins and McTighe, clarify and caution as “not a prescriptive program,” nor “a philosophy of education,” and that it “does not require a belief in any single pedagogical system or approach."

Reading more about the approach, as even we in La Salle-Manila are now being introduced to it, I appreciate the concern of this approach for “understanding” as a central learning outcome. The emphasis of UbD is on making sure that students learn and to learn here is—as the case in real educational experience should be—not merely about undergoing the process of teaching, but about understanding. As the UbD proponents point out, their book is "built upon the conditional premise: IF you wish to develop greater in-depth understanding in your students, then the ideas and processes of Understanding by Design apply."

But what is “understanding”? When do we say that a student has understood? When do ours teachers—when do Filipino public school teachers in particular—say that their students have learned? To my mind, understanding is not just about passing an exam for that can merely, for instance, reflect a capacity to read, listen and memorize.

If my concern as a social science teacher is to teach “citizenship”, when will I say that a student has understood citizenship? Can this mean that I can encourage her to start certain advocacies? Go to rallies even? When can I say that she has understood the notion of the “state” as a repressive apparatus, if she has choked on the fumes from smoke bombs and tear gas canisters thrown by the police to defend the Palace, and when she has thus wept along the River Pasig?

Assuming an understanding of “understanding,” UbD proposes "backward design" or “the practice of looking at the outcomes in order to design curriculum units, performance assessments, and classroom instruction.” A key point in UbD is to make sure that lesson objectives, outcomes, activities, and assessment techniques are all aligned. But then, is that so novel an idea?

One blogger and teacher of mathematics has this interesting online piece entitled “(Mis)Understanding by Design” which raises some questions too about the UbD. He writes:

“In my part of the globe, there is a national curriculum which is a collection of SMART objectives. These learning objectives have always been stated in terms of outcomes. Weren’t they called competencies? Aren’t these competencies tell what to assess? The trouble is, our list of competencies consist of factual and procedural knowledge and very little on problem solving and reasoning which never really get taught because they are all found at the end of each chapter!

According to Wiggins, “The potential of UbD for curricular improvement has struck a chord in American education. Over 250,000 educators own the book. Over 30,000 Handbooks are in use. More than 150 University education classes use the book as a text.”

That explains everything. Everybody is hooked on the book that no one found time to do research if it works or not. Of course, on this part of the world where I come from I could not possibly have full access to current studies in educational planning and curriculum conducted elsewhere. I’m pretty sure though that we don’t have a study here yet. This is actually my issue. We’re jumping on a bandwagon created elsewhere without checking first if it will run on our roads.

Hmm... do we really need this? It has to be pointed out that “Understanding by Design” is a registered trademark owned by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development of the US. Someone had to spend for all these workshops and attendant new learning materials.

My friends have paid much—too much, they opine—to be able to attend these DepEd recommended workshops on UbD. They have paid much to know what they already know by training and experience. Ika nga noong isa, “May kumita lang diyan.”

Last night I watched this feature on the K+12 initiative of DepEd and the show clarified that K+12 does not really address the problem of the quality of education in this country. It is but a program that promises to make our students more marketable in the global market. I was thus reminded of this UbD thing.

I say the problem of this country’s educational system is not in its choice of pedagogical approaches. It’s not in our lack of supposedly novel foreign models to copy and foreigners with Harvard degrees to listen to. I say it’s in the lack of competent teachers as the K+12 debate only highlights.

We need K+12+, not just K+12. Perhaps we can even do with just 12+ if only we weren’t so keen on having our people migrate for precious dollars. Oh, can you understand this formulaic proposition? Understanding by Design will fall meaningless and useless with heads that can only see, listen, and speak, but cannot understand.

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