I have been familiar and have worked to implement Wiggins and McTighe's ideas in Understanding By Design , their groundbreaking book on backwards design and instructional planning
One idea in the book that resonates with me and the way I try to teach (and hope to inspire others to teach) are the Six Facets of Understanding. These understandings are: explanation, interpretation, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. These are hugely applicable to the Social Sciences. Each of these reflect more current trends in standardized curricula including the Advanced Placement Courses.
We stress that our students look at the perspective of any person writing or telling history. This can be considered a higher order thinking skill as one needs to draw from other knowledge or understandings and anlyze how that has affected one's perspective.
By thinking about perspective one is intreperting and working to explain events, dynamics, or politica/social or economic movements. Both of these also require analysis.
To me, one of the most important goals of my classes (and I suppose of education as a whole) would be to help students develop empathy. I very much want for them to begin to understand the reasons behind behaviors and actions in history. I want them to be able to put themselves in the shoes of others.
The culmination of all of this would be to develop a greater sense of self knowledge. I want students to be able to put all of these things together to help them reflect on who they are and why they may or may not think or do what they do.
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