What Came First - the Content or the Assessment? Understanding Backwards Design

Backwards design can easily be summed up: "Teaching is a means to an end" (Wiggins).

It is based off of the concept that some teachers unfortunately put the focus on their teaching, and not the student learning. They do this by planning the content, lesson plans, activities, etc., without considering the end goal. What do we actually need them to know? Not what do we want to teach, but what do we need to teach.

The three stages to Backwards Design are:

1: Identify desired results

2: Determine acceptable evidence

3. Plan learning experiences and instruction

An example of this would be teaching racism. If a teacher wanted to use the book To Kill A Mockingbird to teach racism, so he or she gives the students the book to read. This assumes that all students will have the same "Ahhah!" moment that the teacher did while reading the book, finally understanding racism. This plan isn't going to work, and it certainly isn't going to reach every student. The students are then going to learn To KIll A Mockingbird, and may not understand that you were teaching racism at all.

Now, using backwards design, a teacher would decide to teach racism. He or she would establish that the end goal is for the students to understand what racism is and how systemic it can be. So, the teacher creates a PowerPoint about racism, where he/she points out these things. The teacher then gives students a quick video on racism. The class then reads a passage on racism together. Then, the teacher gives the students To Kill a Mockingbird and asks the class, how does this book show racism? Hopefully, by the end of this unit, the students would better understand the concept because the teacher taught with the end in mind.

Backwards design is a wonderful tool, especially if you want your students to really understand a difficult, or important, source. Whatever primary source you love, (mine is Christopher Columbus's letter back to the King and Queen after the first voyage) use backwards design to make sure that the students understand exactly what the point of the activity is.

Wiggins, Grant and McTighe, Jay. "Backwards Design: Why Backward is Best," Understanding by Design.