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| Source: paintingabout.com |
A Messy Business
Designing instruction is a messy endeavor, or it has been, at least, in my experience. I suppose that there are some highly organized, analytical minds out there who can bypass trial and error and paint pedagogy in concise, unerring strokes on the first try. I am from a much different school of instructional art, where the interior of my mind palace is analogous to the artist's studio pictured above. Ideas, experiences, beliefs, and subject content are mixed together in multiple ways and splattered about until a form emerges. Though I start with some goal or construct in mind, I quickly find that my instructional aspirations become a tiger's "fearful symmetry" and require some organizational framework, lest my students become lost in a jungle of my own making. As graphic organizers aid in bringing a blurry landscape of ideas and facts into gradual focus, so do instructional design models provide a means for clarifying and implementing teaching and learning in a way that has the best chance of resulting in student success.
There are many instructional design models to choose from, and doubtless more are on the way as the great experiment which is public education continues to produce and redefine best practice. Of particular interest to me are two models - "Understanding by Design (UbD)" and the "Universal Design for Learning (UDL)". As is true with most mainstream approaches to pedagogy, these two models share some characteristics and differ in others. Both strive to aid the instructor in reducing the paint splatter or, at the very least, making sure that what finds its way onto the canvas is more Monet than mess.
The Educator's Easel
UbD has been widely used by school systems across the country as a template for instructional design and it is a favorite of the influential Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Much staff development has been devoted to its principles and schools often require teachers to do their lesson planning within its framework. UDL has emerged in recent years and is frequently referenced in online learning scholarship. Both models place a premium on teachers clearly determining what content is most important ("trimming the fat"), providing varied and multiple opportunities for students to access that content, and creating contexts in which students can apply their learning. UbD proposes a sequential, three-step model for pedagogy.
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| Source: nccscurriculum.org |
Key to UbD is the "backward design" approach. For people like me, for whom doing things backwards is normal, this model has immediate appeal. For other more linear thinkers this requires some getting used to. UDL does not propose stages but, rather, principles or guidelines.
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| Source: pinterest.com |
These two models do achieve much the same things. Planning effective learning experiences in the UbD model necessitate consideration of the aspects of engagement and representation that are addressed in UDL. Determining "acceptable evidence" in UbD is analogous to the "multiple means of action and expression" outlined in UDL. Both models undertake to cleanse instruction of what the UbD authors, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, call the "twin sins" of typical instructional design in schools - activity-focused teaching and coverage-focused teaching (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005, p. 3). Both forms of heresy limit the learner's interaction with, and application of, the content being taught. Each also assumes little or no variance in learning styles or interests. For both UbD and UDL the fulcrum of effective instruction is not content-based or instructor-based, and, therefore each model can be applied in the full range of instruction from the elementary years on through the college/university classroom. In fact, the organizing and contextual principles of both are useful when designing learning in vocational and professional training.
Joining Forces
To me the benefits of these instructional design models are best realized by viewing UDL as enveloping UbD. The what, why, and how of learning that are the foundations of UDL greatly enhance the backwards design of UbD. Identifying desired results certainly gets clarifies "why" what we are teaching is important - both to the us and our students. Determining acceptable evidence is more likely to be effective if we embrace basic tenets of differentiation that unlock learning for a wide variety of learning styles and aptitudes. Finally, as we set about the business of planning learning experiences and instruction to satisfy the philosophy of UbD, we are, in fact, faithful to UDL's call for us to present content in different ways. UDL is more of a context than a recipe and, whether we move forward or backwards on the canvas we are painting, it effectively frames our efforts. Supplying multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement dovetail UbD's goals of moving away from simply "covering material" (a phrase I hear often and detest) or engaging students in empty, mindless activities that have no salient connection with specific learning goals. While all teachers want their students to be able to understand and apply what is being taught, as McTighe explains, the "devil is in the details"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8F1SnWaIfE
Construction or Liberation?
Michelangelo famously remarked that he did not "create" his famous David, rather, he simply freed what was already there from its prison of stone. Philosophically, this is much different than building something with a specific vision in mind. Pedagogically, there is a vast difference between spontaneous, "let's see where this takes us and adjust" approaches to teaching, common in Montessori curriculums, and standards-driven instruction with specific, and largely predetermined, outcomes. UDL retains some usefulness in the former, while UbD is more applicable to the latter. Still, both of these frameworks, along with other instructional models, have something to say to each of us - no matter what our philosophical bend may be. Indeed, the measure of any instructional model may be its elasticity. The craft of teaching at its best allows for both construction and liberation, and it is not predetermined or defined by either.
Reference
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd edition). Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
