Beyond Knowledge,
Facts, and Skills
Teaching for Understanding through
Curriculum Mapping
If you always do what you’ve
always done, you’ll get what
you’ve always gotten.
Learners understand when they
can…
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Find examples and evidence
Generalize
Apply and use knowledge in new situations
Interpret and provide meaning
Make analogies
Look at an issue from different points of view
Represent the topic in new ways
Show empathy
Reveal self-understanding
“Education is that
which remains after
we’ve forgotten
everything we
learned.”
B.F. Skinner
Working toward…
A
curriculum of ideas and
concepts and thoughts,
Not a curriculum of
topics, skills, facts, and
knowledge
Enduring Understandings
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It’s a paradox in our educational
system that a student can make all A’s
and still not understand a principle,
concept, or idea.
“A person who
understands something
is capable of going
beyond the information
given.”
Jerome Bruner, 1973
In Teaching for
Understanding, facts…
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Provide a critical foundation for content
knowledge
Are tools for gaining insight into
conceptual ideas and for developing
understanding
Support big idea focus
Are vehicles for students to apply new
knowledge to past knowledge as they
integrate thinking around bigger ideas
that transfer across time and culture.
“The frameworks of meaning
almost work like Velcro—
facts can go back and reattach. And the facts become
more memorable because
they have a purpose and a
context.” Carol Ann Tomlinson
Concepts/Understandings
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Broad-based ideas around which curriculum
is organized
Provide conceptual lens through which to
study or frame topics
Mental constructs
Timeless and universal
Broad and abstract
One or two words
Categorize a variety of examples
Go way beyond topics
Transcend disciplines--macro concepts
Examples of Concepts/Understandings
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Change
Patterns
Power
Equilibrium
Systems
Revolution
Culture
Interdependence
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Conflict/Cooperation
Perception
Order
Innovation
Cycles
Time
Concept-based Learning
Concept-Based
Knowledge-Based
 Focus on DOING
 Focus on KNOWING
 Active application of knowledge  Recall of information
 Generalization from facts
 Information in isolation
 Expected to remember big
 Expected to remember
picture ideas
knowledge, facts, skills
 Fewer, more significant topics
 Focus on covering many
topics
 Passive reception of info
 Active involvement
 Memorization of facts
 Teach to transfer knowledge
across time and discipline
Concept-based Learning
Concept-Based
 Significant key principles
 Textbook is resource and
reference
 Integration of disciplines
Knowledge-Based
 Insignificant facts
 Textbook is course
syllabus
 Separation of disciplines
Why is teaching for
understanding essential?
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Knowledge is expanding exponentially. Students
must learn the skills of assessing multiple data
sources and applying skills of creative, critical,
and integrated thinking to assimilate, sort, and
pattern information.
In a world of rapid change and global
interaction, citizens need conceptual thinking
abilities to understand increasingly complex
social, political, and economic relationships.
Why don’t students understand?
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“The findings of the research over the past 2030 years are quite compelling: students do not
understand in the most basic sense of that term.
They lack the capacity to take knowledge learned
in one setting and apply it appropriately in a
different setting.” Gardner
“We’ve got to do fewer things in school. The
greatest enemy of understanding is coverage.”
Gardner
How do we assess understanding?
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Performances of understanding which assess
student’s ability to use factual content to support
conceptual understanding
Paper and pencil tests--generally inadequate
Tasks which require application of knowledge,
facts, and skills in new, unfamiliar situations
Authentic, real-world tasks
Tasks modeled after how professionals perform
their work
Enduring Understandings
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Major concepts and ideas that anchor a unit or
course
Universal generalizations, big ideas that students
will remember long after they’ve forgotten
details
Focus on concepts, principles, and processes
that apply to new situations within and beyond a
subject
Enduring Understandings…
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Are linchpin ideas
Have lasting value
Are “big picture” ideas
Have great potential for engaging students
Lie at the heart of a discipline
Are essential for authentic learning experiences
Examples…
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Traditions reflect beliefs, values, and heritage of
a culture.
Sometimes the best mathematical answer is not
the best solution to real-world problems.
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Man often exploits the environment for material
gains.
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There are parallels to life in the US today to life in
various periods in US history.
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A society is shaped by people from different
cultures who make up that society.
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Historical events often mold specific character
and personality traits among those individuals
who experience them; different types of events
mold different characters and personalities.
Essential Questions
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Are critical global, abstract, overarching
questions that drive teaching and learning within
a unit of study.
Press students to think beyond what they already
know.
Are the focus of learning and central questions
of inquiry.
Function of Essential Questions
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To point to key
inquiries and core ideas
of a discipline
To create a focus for a
unit
To force students
beyond learning of
facts to a level of
conceptual
understanding
To help build schema
for transfer
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To point clearly and
explicitly toward big
ideas
To reveal richness
and complexity of
subject
To challenge
thinking beyond facts
To engage students
in examining what’s
really important
Function of Essential Questions
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To enhance,
encourage, and
enable crossdiscipline
connections
To allow for inductive
teaching
To aid and encourage
thinking at high levels
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To tell what students
should learn from
what they’re doing.
To take thinking to
the level of
conceptual
understanding
To build knowledge
for transfer
What do essential questions look
like?
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They cannot be
answered
satisfactorily in one
sentence.
They are conceptbased, not fact-based.
They are openended.
They are multilayered.
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They may serve to
organize an entire
year’s curriculum.
They are universal,
global, and abstract.
There are usually 2 to
5 per unit.
They may be difficult,
complex, and
challenging.
How should we use essential questions
in our classrooms?
Post in classroom, on parent information
about unit, on handouts, and in student
notebooks.
 Organize notes and unit information
around them.
 Let them guide discussions, instruction,
and investigations.
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 Refer
to them repeatedly.
 Ask them over and over.
 Connect essential questions with
curriculum maps.
 Share your essential questions with
other faculty members.
Essential Question Examples
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How do events and experiences influence the development of
character? (biographies)
Is behavior more strongly influenced by nature or nurture? (genetics)
Who are heroes in American Literature, and what insights do we gain
into American culture through these characters?
What do the best problem solvers do?
What does it mean to reason mathematically?
How do humans communicate?
What can patterns reveal?
How can data lie or mislead?
What is the ideal role of our government?
Who is an American?
Must a story have a moral, heroes, and villains?
Who is a friend?
Is U.S. history a history of progress?
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What character traits were most highly prized by
Americans in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries?
How are they alike or different in different time
periods? How did these traits shape historical
events?
How did historical events shape these traits? How
do the art, literature, and music of each century
reflect these traits?
What is the American dream and how has it
changed in different periods of American history?
What individuals have personified the American
dream?
As you talk to your peers:
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Use the COS and Curriculum Maps created by your
peers to guide your planning.
Create a broad vertical map that reflects the content
you want your students to know, understand, and be
able to do.
Identify for yourself the enduring understanding
your students will grasp.
Create essential questions (2-5) for each concept.
Resources
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Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction:
Teaching Beyond the Facts
Understanding by Design
Mapping the Big Picture