�Leslie Owen Wilson 2004,  restrictions on usage

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Introductory note: Creating any kind of effective and meaningful instruction requires periods of incubation and percolation. This process also requires critical thinking and appraisal. The following pages are part of that process. The questions contained herein are ones essential to creating good curricula and to choosing instructional models and methods appropriate to both the tasks and the learners. 

In choosing effective and appropriate models of teaching the following need to be considered.  The of processes involved in thinking about instruction before developing tasks should be the same in every instructional experience, whether it is creating a  single lesson or writing a whole curriculum. If you use the metaphor of those Mylar pictures in textbooks that showed the varied layers of topography, or parts of the human anatomy, then writing curriculum, or developing single, lessons is a similar process. It is like developing a series of layers ( both real and imagined) until it becomes a whole complete picture. 

You my find some of the questions below repetitive, that is because I really want you to think about what you are doing.

Preliminary Big Questions: 

• What am I proposing to teach?

• Why is it important?

• How is it relevant to the learner?

• What are the specific desired outcomes?

• What is evidence of mastery?

• How can I effectively use learning time? 

 Step 1: What is your vision of your learners? 

• All instruction should be measured against what you know about your learners and how the information, processes, and/or skills you are going to teach are relevant or important to both the understanding and perpetuation of your discipline, and/or to the learners themselves and their futures. 

• Learn to keep abreast of generational profiles, social and cultural trends, and demographics which will enable you to better contextualize information and learning experiences so that they are meaningful and connected to learners� lives and backgrounds. 

• You should also be somewhat familiar with things like instructional technology, learning styles, and what neuroscience tells us about how the brain actually learns and retains information so that you can construct effective instructional experiences. 

• Too, it is important to consider what vision you hold of what the learners will look like after they have contact with you. Create a well-defined vision of your learners at the end of their contact with you.

Questions: These types of questions should be asked in forming your end vision of your learners: 

• Specifically what skills will they have? 

• What will they be able to do, and at what level of mastery (gradations like beginning, developed, mastered, or basic, intermediate, proficient) ?

• Specifically, what will they know and understand?

• How will they have changed? How will their thinking, feelings, or physical movement or abilities have changed?

• What is your instructional image of the learners? (active/passive)?

• What expectations do you have of entering learners?

• What awareness do you have of the culture and history of your learners?

• How do your students learn best?

• What instructional techniques and models work well and fit your content and your types of learners best?

Step 2: Determine what is worthy of teaching and learning.

Some of the following have been adapted or modified from McTighe and Wiggins (Understanding by design, ASCD), and should help in selecting and crafting educational experiences. One needs to determine: 

• What information is worth knowing? 

• What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (procedures) will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results? 

• What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills? 

• What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals?

• What is worthy and requiring of understanding? 

• What learning and content promotes not only understanding, but interest, and excellence?

• What is enduring and/ or at the heart of the discipline/position?

• What needs uncoverage? ( what is hidden and needs to be critically appraised or investigated by learners) 

• What learning experiences and content are potentially engaging?

• What is evidence of understanding?

• What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals?

• Is the overall design coherent and effective?

 Selected filters that will help you decide what understandings (content, processes, and skills) and information to select. 

They should: 

• Offer potential for engaging [inspiring or challenging] students.

• Represent a big idea having enduring value beyond the classroom.

• Reside at the heart of the discipline (involve �doing� the subject)

• Require uncoverage (abstract or often misunderstood ideas). 

[To the uncoverage concept I would add these are often ideas or concepts that are in flux, in the process of changing or becoming -- especially if changes are due to new discoveries, findings, information, research, or areas where ideas are being fully synthesized into new frameworks or theories. L. Wilson]

 Step 3: Evaluation - determine if the instructional design worked. 

Assessments that go with the different levels are:

Illustration from Wiggins & McTighe, Understanding by Design, ASCD