Schooling by Design

Mission, Action, and Achievement

Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781416617372
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Why, despite years of trying, have efforts to achieve lasting, effective school reform fallen short? What curricular and policy elements must be in place to move forward? How should the roles of teachers and education leaders be defined to best support the point of school?

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and other questions in Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement. Building on the premise of Understanding by Design, their acclaimed framework for curriculum, instruction, and assessment, the authors present a compelling argument for using the same approach to reach a grand goal: the reform of schooling as a whole. In their view, reform rests on six pillars:

* A relentless focus on the long-term mission of school: enabling learners to demonstrate understanding and mature habits of mind;
* A curriculum and assessment framework that honors the mission and ensures that content "coverage" is no longer the accepted approach to instruction;
* A set of principles of learning that support all decisions about pedagogy and planning;
* Structures, policies, job descriptions, practices, and use of resources consistent with mission and learning principles;
* An overall strategy that includes ongoing feedback and adjustment; and
* A set of tactics linked to strategy, including a planning process that uses "backward design" to accomplish the key work of reform.

Practical, insightful and provocative, Schooling by Design elaborates on each of these elements and presents educators with both the rationale and the methodology for closing the gap between what we say we want from school and what school actually delivers—for turning vision into reality.

Part I

A Vision of Schooling

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Chapter 1

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What Is the Mission of Schooling?

No doubt some excellent educational work is being done by artistic teachers who do not have a clear conception of goals but do have an intuitive sense of what is good teaching.... Nevertheless, if an educational program is to be planned and if efforts for continued improvement are to be made, it is very necessary to have some conception of the goals that are being aimed at. These educational objectives become the criteria by which materials are selected, content is outlined, instructional procedures are developed, and tests and examinations are prepared.
—Ralph Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The title of this book is Schooling by Design. Schooling by design means that we develop school to achieve a learning-related mission. As the dictionary definitions remind us, to design or to produce a design is to aim to achieve a specific and explicit purpose:

• To formulate a plan for; devise.
• To create or contrive for a particular purpose or effect.
• To have as a goal or purpose; intend.
• To make or execute plans.
• To have a goal or purpose in mind.
• The purposeful or inventive arrangement of parts or details.
• A plan; a project.
• A reasoned purpose; an intent.
• Deliberate intention.

Thus, a school mission is the long-term goal in mind against which we design (and forever adjust) schooling. To design with a purpose in mind means to intend to achieve a clear and explicit goal, to be committed to achieving specific effects in learners. Schooling at its best reflects a purposeful arrangement of parts and details, organized with deliberate intention, for achieving the kinds of learning we seek. A mission summarizes what we are in business to accomplish in learners. To honor it, we have to ensure that schooling is organized to accomplish it. In our language, school must be designed backward from the mission.

This is not a new or offbeat idea. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) highlights this idea in its first current accreditation standard for high schools:

Mission and Expectations for Student Learning

The school's mission statement describes the essence of what the school as a community of learners is seeking to achieve. The expectations for student learning are based on and drawn from the school's mission statement. These expectations are the fundamental goals by which the school continually assesses the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process. Every component of the school community must focus on enabling all students to achieve the school's expectations for student learning.

1. The mission statement and expectations for student learning shall be developed by the school community and approved and supported by the professional staff, the school board, and any other schoolwide governing organization.
2. The school's mission statement shall represent the school community's fundamental values and beliefs about student learning.
3. The school shall define schoolwide academic, civic, and social learning expectations that

   —are measurable;
   —reflect the school's mission.

4. For each academic expectation in the mission the school shall have a targeted level of successful achievement identified in a rubric.
5. The school shall have indicators by which it assesses the school's progress in achieving schoolwide civic and social expectations.
6. The mission statement and the school's expectations for student learning shall guide the procedures, policies, and decisions of the school and shall be evident in the culture of the school.
7. The school shall review regularly the mission statement and expectations for student learning using a variety of data to ensure that they reflect student needs, community expectations, the district mission, and state and national standards. (Commission on Public Secondary Schools, 2005, p. 3)

So when we talk about schooling by design, we refer to a simple set of questions related to purpose that should guide the building, or especially the renovation, of school and the actions of every educator:

• What is the school's mission, its reason for being? What would successful graduates look like, be like, be capable of doing well with their learning?
• Given the school's mission, what follows for curriculum and assessment?
• Given its curriculum and assessment (and what we know about learning), what follows for instruction?
• Given such a system for causing mission-related learning, what follows for the jobs of teachers and administrators, school structures, policies, and action?

In other words, what does mission imply and obligate us to? What kind of schooling does mission demand? This is the inquiry and the logic of the book: schooling by design, not schooling by habit or impulse.

The Point of Schooling

What is the particular mission of school? What learning is school in business to achieve? There have been as many answers as educators throughout history, of course. But we narrow the responses dramatically if we ask a more practical analytic question: in general, how might we categorize the long-term educational accomplishments that schools have said historically they are in business to achieve? That question generates only a handful of categories and we summarize them as follows:

• Academic excellence and intellectual preparation for higher education.
• The development of mature habits of mind and attitudes.
• Artistic and aesthetic ability and sensitivity.
• Health, wellness, and athletic development.
• Character—mature social, civic, and ethical conduct.
• Personal skill development and professional direction.

More specifically, a scan of hundreds of mission statements reveals that three long-term aims predominate: "lifelong learning," "critical and creative thinking," and "productive contributions to society." Here are some typical mission statements:

The mission of LaVace Stewart Elementary School is to form a partnership with parents and the community to prepare our diverse population of students to become lifelong learners in a nurturing, safe environment with high expectations so they will become responsible, productive citizens in an ever-changing society.

* * *

Bremen High School aims to develop students who

• Exhibit creative and critical thinking.
• Develop self-esteem, pride, and respect for themselves and others.
• Find a balance between academic success and involvement in extracurricular activities.
• Adapt to a continually changing technological world.
• Demonstrate the democratic living skills of consensus building and group problem solving in order to become active citizens in their community.
• Span the transition from competent student to productive, responsible citizen.
• Understand the value of education and the need for lifelong learning.

* * *

The mission of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, valuing our tradition of excellence, is to develop all of our students as passionate, confident, lifelong learners who have competence and strength of character to realize their aspirations and thoughtfully contribute to a diverse and changing world.

* * *

The mission of the Memphis City Schools is to prepare all children to be successful citizens and workers in the 21st century. This will include educating them to read with comprehension, write clearly, compute accurately, think, reason, and use information to solve problems.

These statements can be reduced to one encompassing sentence: Schools exist to cause learning that is intellectually vital, generative of future self-directed learning, personally meaningful and productive, and socially valuable.

Some readers may protest: "But schools don't have a coherent mission. They can't—there are too many diverse forces, values, and goals at work in education." Others may protest in the other direction: "You are trying to take away my professional freedom!" We think that both positions confuse the idea of having a clear and explicit purpose for an education with the defects of particular mission statements and school policies. We are not claiming that all schools should have the same mission, nor are we claiming that coherence comes easily. We are saying that the point of any school is meaningful, useful, and coherent learning derived from explicit and vital long-term purposes, regardless of content and pedagogical philosophy. Nor are we claiming that a mission statement should narrowly focus on one goal or mandate one form of pedagogy. We are claiming that what any valid mission statement should do is summarize what an education is meant to help the learner achieve over the long haul, in and beyond school. It should summarize the worthy student accomplishments we are dedicated to causing over time outside our individual classrooms above all else. A mission is a commitment to a few priority results, from which some concrete pedagogical implications logically follow.

We put the matter in terms of long-term commitment for a very practical reason. The problem with all conventional schools, we think, whether public or private (or whether we consider primary, secondary, or higher education), is that when we look closely at what students actually spend their time doing in school, we see that there is rarely a long-term, consistent commitment to any long-term intellectual result beyond a particular class and lesson. When we say schooling should have purpose, we mean simply this: no matter what the content or activity, the relationship between it and a long-term, worthy learning goal should be logical, built into curriculum and assessment, and transparent to students, teachers, and community.

A Focus on Understanding, Transfer, and Habits of Mind

In Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), we proposed that understanding can be thought of in two basic ways that shape our conception of the mission of schooling. We understand when we (1) learn to use powerful ideas to make schoolwork connected and meaningful and (2) are able to transfer our learning thoughtfully and effectively to novel situations and problems.

Accordingly, we contend that schools exist to develop and deepen students' understanding of important ideas and processes in the disciplines, equipping them to transfer their learning in meaningful and effective ways, and cultivating lifelong habits of mind. To accomplish this mission, curricula, courses, units, and lessons must be built backward from the meanings and the transfer that we seek. Failure to do so will ensure that the broader mission is lost.

The point of learning anything is to make it our own, to have it culminate in some new power and perspective. Teachers have always held this commonsense view: if we really "get it," we can make all sorts of meaningful connections—to other learning in school and to our own lives—and we can apply our learning. When we "understand" a subject, we possess more than a technical grab bag of official knowledge and skill, in other words. We have become capable of "disciplined" thought and action, in varied situations; we can make meaning of events and facts that strike others as unconnected or uninteresting; we can tap and wisely adapt all our prior learning to a quirky challenge at hand (think of the expert diplomat, jazz musician, orthopedist, or practitioner of karate). In short, understanding is never a passive possession of information or mere automaticity of skill, but the capacity to act wisely, decisively, and effectively. All learning must be designed, therefore, to develop our judgment and ability to act wisely in context.

A focus on understanding is, in fact, the only way to honor the diverse dispositional goals we summarized earlier. The point of school is not merely the attainment of technical expertise. School is in business to promote certain worthy habits, attitudes, and conduct that stand beyond subjects: critical thinking, civic responsibility, and lifelong learning, among others. Without stretching the meaning of the word understand too far, we think it helpful to note that one cannot truly understand without those habits of mind (see Costa & Kallick, 2000; Perkins, 1992). In fact, the very habits of mind we seek are best honored and developed when the curriculum and assessments make them the requisites for academic success and the desired effect of academic accomplishment. An education geared solely for knowledge acquisition bypasses the key habits of mind by making them unnecessary for short-term success.

In sum, we can best safeguard the long-term educational goals that perpetually fall through the cracks of "coverage" by ensuring that key lessons and assessments demand the habits of mind, character traits, and intellectual abilities we find in mission and program goal statements. Only an education framed to make content serve as a means to meaning making and transfer ability can yield the habits and attitudes that school is in business to accomplish.

What Would an Understanding-Focused Education Look Like?

Consider the difference between a typical unit of study and an understanding-focused curricular approach when applied to the same targeted content. Our examples address a common topic in secondary mathematics, "measures of central tendency"—mean, median, and mode. Notice how the second version focuses on meaning making, transfer, and worthwhile habits of mind—without sacrificing content.

Here is a familiar treatment of the topic from a major textbook (Burton et al., 1998):

1. The text defines the terms mean, median, and mode, with examples for each term. "When you want to summarize a set of data as one value, you can use one of the three measures of central tendency" (p. 248).
2. An example of the same data set is graphed and considered in light of each type of measure discussed.
3. The text provides independent practice via 15 problems (for example, completing a table in which all three measures are calculated for a data set).
4. The text poses three so-called problem-solving applications; for example, "Eight joggers ran the following number of miles: 8, 5, 6, 4, 8, 8, 7, and 10. Determine the mean, median, and mode of the miles jogged" (pp. 247-249).

The text presents the content as a discrete skill, taught and tested with no apparently larger purpose. The only hint that measures of central tendency have potentially interesting and important uses appears in one sidebar, called "Business Link":

Television advertisers often use the median income of an audience as the basis for deciding what products to advertise during a particular show. Why would knowing the median income of the audience be better than knowing the mean income of the same group? (p. 248)

The authors also comment:

Because of the two high scores of 30 [outliers compared with the rest of the data], the mean is much larger than the mode or median. So the mean is not a good measure of the data. Either the median or mode represents the data better. (p. 248)

The text offers no insight about what "represents the data better" means, or how the presentation of data is invariably reflective of purpose and audience. In short, the "why?" and "so what?" questions are not raised or considered. The test questions provided in the book only reinforce for teacher and students alike that the de facto goal is to learn to calculate answers related to each kind of measure, in isolation. Nowhere is there an emphasis on the real-world problem of transfer of this idea: When should students use or no...