Learning is a complex and deep area where teachers have to assume a new perspective to improve education and their own qualities of teaching. The idea of helping students to achieve their goals is more than an external mechanism to support their needs and problems, it is beyond traditional stereotypes assumed by generations that have been ineffective. The idea of this proposal is to assume that " our goals are often not as clear as they might be..."( Wiggins, 2005) From this point of view, goals appear not only as the final stage but also as the central element for designing our plan, because our perspective has to be wide and precise in terms of how we develop and apply our goals into practice.
While Understanding implies to comprehend and transfer information in real situations, knowlegde means apprehend the processes of data(Dewey) This idea is fundamental when we talk about Essential Questions which are commonly used by teachers in the classrooms, but it doesn`t mean that those questions are well guided. In fact, it is common that the direction of these questions and its aims are not clear and not well guided by teachers. For that reason is fundamental that teachers identify "explicit learning goals"(Wiggins, 2005) in order to analyse and determine what they have to manage and apply. However, teachers are always facing a problem of amount called " overload problem"( Wiggins,2005) This common difficulty where teachers have to decide the topics and how to do it in a short period of time, it is a common scenario where the best idea is to be focus on quality more than quantity, to help students to make the correct click.
As Wiggins states, " ...big ideas are inherently transferable, they help connect discrete topics and skills". Teachers´ ideas are not commonly bigger than their desires, in other words, their ideas are not so efffective. The problem is that teachers are not able to help students realize about the priorities that the task has in its spirit. Moreover, there is a wall for students between the goal and the challenge to identify that goal. As Wiggins says, "big ideas are the core of the subject"(2005) mainly because students have to discover it to understand the implicit message. These big ideas are representative of what teachers are finding out and reflecting to help students to transfer ideas effectively to avoid misleading and irrelevant processes of learning.
I totally agree with you when you say that there is a wall for students between the goal and the challenge to identify that goal. That is so true! Teachers should let students know what the objectives are and what they are meant to learn. But also, they have to provide the aproppriate planning for guiding students reach those goals more easily.
ReplyDeleteIt is important that teachers be aware of what students need to learn and why. For that reason having goals clear are important to have a successful class in where students can learn.
ReplyDeleteHaving clear goals is fundamental in a class and I also believe that students need to know what the goals are in a course in order to identify them easily and know how to reach them when they are in a class.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the comparison that you make between understanding and knowledge. It would be very useful if teachers understand these concepts with the definition you make.
ReplyDeleteI think that the problem on the effectiveness of teaching big ideas is that teachers are not prepared when making those connections on students' minds with accuracy. They try to avoid critical thinking and instead they pass topics without clicking students' minds.
ReplyDeleteIt's right, students have to discover the goals to understand the implicit message. However, it is not always like that because students can't see the real purpose of the lesson because the teacher did not prepare the lesson and obviously he did not think about the purpose of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's important to mention that in education, one of the main problems is that teachers are not able to help students realize about the priorities that the task has, they just give the instructions and students have to do their work.
ReplyDeleteJorge, creo que las ideas principales de que mencionas acá representan dónde debemos comenzar en este camino de evaluación estudiantil, y no es algo que se hace mucho en las escuelas en general. Me gustó que digas que los profesores están llegando a esta conclusión de cómo deseñar con el final en mente. Seguramente esto ayudaría las enseñanzas en muchas escuelas mundialmente.
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