Teaching Journal: Teaching for Meaning and Understanding

mctighe_and_seif_teaching_for_meaning_and_understanding.pdf
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Authors and summary: This article was written by educational consultants Jay McTighe and Elliot Seif as a summary of underlying research and theory. It states the following:

• core goal of schooling is to educate meaning and understanding
  
• a synthesized framework of concepts and ideas facilitates learning
  
• depth of understanding core concepts is more important for achievement than breadth
  
• interactive teaching and authentic intellectual work lead to higher achievement
  
• clear performance standards that require students to demonstrate understanding creates
  
• advance organizers and explanatory responses to higher-order questions results in better learning

Thoughts: The above points all seem to make sense and are more or less common sense to my way of thinking. I definitely agree that the U.S. covers too many topics and attempts to fit too many facts into the curriculum. I would love to see the country move to less facts and topics and more concepts and demonstrated understanding by students.