Misunderstanding UBD

(Second of three parts)

In their book “Understanding by Design” (UBD), Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe describe six facets of understanding: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy and self-knowledge.

But they do not mean that all six should be in every lesson.

In “The UBD Guide to Creating High-Quality Units,” they say, “Not every facet is well suited to every understanding. Facets are provided to help spark suitable assessment ideas. Select the appropriate facet/s depending on the content and the desired understandings.”

But in the Philippine “2010 Secondary Education Curriculum Math Teaching Guides” for public high school teachers, every facet was “forced” into every lesson.

Thus, problems emerged, which troubled us mathematics professors at the Ateneo de Manila University and colleagues in other groups.

For example, in second year, for the first topic “Rules on Finding Factors of Polynomials,” to be done in three days, “learners should be able to demonstrate understanding of factoring using the six facets of understanding.”

It is followed by “glib statements, without deep thought,” according to Sr. Iluminada Coronel, F.M.M., president of the Math Teachers Association of the Philippines.

Students supposedly should apply their knowledge “authentically” by “posing situations in real life involving special products and analyze them” (how realistic is this?); show self-knowledge by being “receptive” in “assessing how to give the best representation to a situation involving special products” (huh?); show empathy by being “open” in “describing the difficulties one can experience without knowing the rules for special products.” (Sister Coronel says, “Many people live without knowing special products. I doubt they need our empathy.”)

Like any other framework, UBD has specialized language that makes sense when used properly.

In Activity One in the “Explore” section, the diagrams—squares and rectangles—have wrong dimensions. In the “Firm Up” section, students are asked to “use the sides of each part of the square” in the aforementioned Activity One (with figures of wrong dimensions). Which sides? Which part?  Which square?

Guide but don’t tell?

“Teachers were told that they should only guide the students, but not tell them directly the concept to be developed,” says Ateneo math professor Ian Garces. “But if they follow the guides, the teachers have difficulty extracting the right conclusions from students.”

To guide-but-not-tell, teachers depend on performance tasks, which allegedly involve lots of expense and time. Each lesson requires at least one task, a total of five to six per quarter, an impossible goal.

But performance tasks have been misinterpreted, too. “They can be simple and inexpensive,” says Rita Atienza, part of Wiggins’ UBD training team in Authentic Education, “and are done twice a quarter.”

Teachers use a variety of strategies, mixing straight lectures with discovery methods. Eschewing traditional methods in favor of “more creative” ones sometimes hampers understanding. “Imagine how stressful it would be for the teacher to guide, but not tell, the students, to discover, derive, and formulate the quadratic formula,” says Garces.

UBD does not discourage traditional lectures. “Depending on the goal, direct instruction is important,” says Atienza. “Lectures, board work, teacher demos should be used when needed.”

Flash flood

“All the teachers I talked to, in more than 10 schools nationwide, could not finish the topics for a quarter,” says Garces. “They go back to the non-UBD style. In fact, many teachers stopped using the guides, because they would end up using the old approach anyway, so why not use it from the start?”

“Majority of the divisions in the National Capital Region are no longer using UBD,” says education supervisor Joel Torrecampo, “because students will take the National Achievement Test in March and, with UBD, teachers will not be able to finish the competencies needed for third year.”

“School department heads said teachers using UBD were late in the work budget,” Torrecampo says, “so we decided that only those in the higher sections would use UBD, while those in the other sections would use traditional lecture, discussion, and other strategies.”

Contrary to what teachers think, traditional lecture and discussion are valid UBD strategies.

“In many educational reforms, teachers are not well-supported to understand fully the main ideas and thus to reform their teaching,” says National Scientist Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, S.J. “Projects are done within too short a time, training too hurried. Think of a flash flood rushing through the school system, with no time for absorption. The result is not surprising. Teachers pay lip service to the new books and curriculum, but go back to their familiar old methods of teaching.”

When teachers complain, they are told that “coverage does not matter,” says Garces. “What is important is the understanding, they are told, not the coverage.” However convincing this may sound, no good educator will agree.

“The end goals of a UBD unit are the transfer and meaning goals,” says Atienza. “It is incorrect to say that ‘coverage doesn’t matter.’ What UBD does say is that coverage of content is the means to these goals, not the end in itself.”

Problem of transfer

Guide writers equate “transfer” in UBD to mean connections to other topics or applications to real life. This may be true often but then problems appear.

For example, for “Sum and Product of Roots,” second-year students are asked to “write journals on situations involving sum and product of roots.” For “Expressions with Rational Exponents Written in Radical Form and Vice-Versa,” the activity is “make a portfolio of expressions with rational exponents written in radical form and vice-versa.”

Journals and portfolios are helpful when used well, but activities need to be more instructive and thoughtful. How can students learn (much less transfer) anything with such vague guidance?

(To be concluded next week)

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