Understandings+for+Today+and+Tomorrow

=Plenary Session=

media type="custom" key="2877927" (a presentation prepared to share ideas with colleagues, has also been uploaded to slide share)

David Perkins - Understanding Today and Tomorrow
What is understanding and how does it develop? What are the components of an effective education for the world that students live in now and will live in 10, 20, or 50 years from now?
 * Presentation will address the following Project Zero questions:**

//‘Taming the Wild and Wilding the Tame’ - theme for the presentation//

The three (subversive) questions we need to ask more often

1. What’s worth learning? (and further more, what version of this will I teach) 2. What kind of knowing matters? (and, what is our view of knowing something) 3. So, how might our be teaching be different?


 * What’s worth learning?**

What’s something you understand well?

When we understanding deeply it is something that we the are: • Alert to • have an expansive understanding of • Adventurous in our thinking about • Proactive in our use

Understandings of Wide Scope are those which are;
 * central to the discipline
 * illuminating beyond the discipline, and
 * can be proactively mapped (to the known world)

Where do we find understandings of wide scope? ............ in ecology, in simple machines, drama of tragedy, the art of story, globalisation, conflict and resolution, spaceship earth (see Postman's book for grand narratives) it is not a course/subject but rather a ongoing through line

Grand narratives - what are they? They provide ways of viewing the world - they provide understandings of wide scope

What else is worth pursuing: The good, the true and the beautiful - ref: Howard Gardner’s book,The Disciplined Mind discusses this.

Perkins asks how many participants learnt about quadratic questions (everyone) Who has used them in the last 10yrs (some) Who has used them in the last 10yrs outside an educational setting (only 1 or 2) How relevant was this to us? how could it have been made relevant?

The Achievement Gap............ What about the Relevance Gap? How relevant are topics/content within the curriculum?

One way to address relevance is to readdress the way work with the content. Examine current content and ask how can this be more generative - where are the possibilities for understandings of wide scope? (eg some abstract mathematical ideas can be viewed from the perspective of mathematical modeling - important in giving relevance to mathematics - mathematical modeling is an understanding of wide scope.)

What kind of knowing matters?

Knowing a lot well - it is useful to know information/facts, but this is not sufficient

Performative Knowing - Trying to reason with what we know (displaying a performance of understanding) we use what we know about the area and demonstrate persistence with using this knowledge ...... Testing and trialing, adjusting our thinking to use it to demonstrate/apply our understanding to a new situation.

This is demonstrated when using phrases such as... 'Have an understanding ' 'Posses an understanding We say we ‘Grasp something, apprehend something’ We say ‘We’re getting it’ ‘Either you get it or you don’t’
 * Understanding of Possession**


 * Understanding as Performance**

Being able to think and act flexibly with what you know This is a performative kind of knowing

We also need to consider a ‘**Proactive View’ of knowing** - where you use your understanding to solve your own problems (ie the student is the originator of the problem.) It starts with the problem to be solved or a signficant question that matters

3. So how might our teaching be different?
 * Teaching for Understanding**

From a performative point of view


 * Teaching for Understanding Framework**

• What do you want learners to understand? (generative topics/ throughlines) • What do you want learners to understand about (understanding goals) • What will they do to come to understand it? (understanding performances • How will you know whether they are understanding? (ongoing assessment)

A proactive view of knowing needs to be in the foreground

How might teaching for understanding be different? It can be narrow, the implementation of the model (goals, performances of understanding.........) we need to be thinking about the scope of the understanding, the proactive nature of the knowing, this is important

What is worth learning?

What kind of ‘fit’ do our topics have to the //Big Ideas// that are worth knowing, are they widely mappable to a range of disciplines?

What kind of knowing matters?

What’s worth learning ? (understandings of wide scope - and relevance) What kind of knowing matters? (performative and proactive knowing) How might teaching be different (teaching for proactive understanding)

The wild and tame - the tame and the wild