"Many nations lament the academic progress of their students year after year. Government officials institute "solutions" and throw money at the problems, but the solutions usually center around increased objectives to ensure topics are covered fully and more testing to make certain the curriculum is taught as defined. However the focus is on the content rather than on the development of the whole child - social, emotional, intellectual and physical - a terrible mistake.”
- H. Lynn Erickson
Erickson states that, "Quality teaching is supported by quality curriculums. The curriculum must be concept-based to meet the goal of transfer of knowledge, deep conceptual understanding, synergistic thinking, intercultural understanding, and personal intellectual engagement." In order to ensure a teacher is meeting this concept-based model, the BD (Backwards Design) planning strategy helps to visualize each piece of a theme or unit coming together and enables the teacher to developing the unit continuously.
With the BD/CBI model, the ability to lay out fundamental topical understandings, general understanding and specific understandings is very clear and intentional. These unit planners can help ensure that a concept based teaching plan will be developed and implemented.
One area that we are currently working on in our classrooms has been the development of lesson specific objectives that are stated before, during and after each lesson. These objectives are to be visible to all students at all times. As I learn more about the concept-based model of instruction and learning, I am noticing that this "objective" style of instruction fits under the definition two-dimensional instruction rather than three dimensional instruction. While I still feel that the objectives are beneficial and can give instructors and students a quick description of what students "should" learn while in class, most of our objectives only focus on topical understandings and factual knowledge, and I feel that I could give more options for students to answer questions that promote concepts or questions that students would even be able to debate or question to come up with their own conclusions.
These various types of questions during instruction are important because general questions based around facts do not promote transferable knowledge. Erickson states, "Knowledge transfers at the conceptual level. Concepts, generalizations and principles are are applied across global contexts and situations." To me, this means identifying what concepts can be used in more than one lesson. Creating and overarching question, over multiple disciplines is a way to connect multiple themes, and I believe would allow students to apply their knowledge and understanding to many areas.
For example, if a student in my first grade classroom is learning about the idea of fractions, the concept of fractions or a whole being broken into parts, is identified during math class in regards to shapes and numbers. We could also apply the the fraction concept to social studies as we move towards cultural studies and identify various communities around the world. In science, we could apply the concept towards habitats as we define the needs of animals and the fraction of food available in a certain area, or as we discuss how important a fraction of the population is to a specific habitat. We could the move towards general and specific understandings that would promote the transfer-ability of key concepts.
Another aspect of the CBI and BD design models is how they both relate to student learning. The CBI model recognizes that intellectual and emotional engagement are essential to the motivation of learning ( Erickson p. 7). The BD model helps to identify what is worth covering and what isn't, by allowing the teacher to identify what the priorities are for enduring understanding (Wiggins & McTighe). This can keep what is interesting, engaging and motivating at the forefront of learning, to ensure students are an active part of the curriculum concepts.
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