About Learning Goals

In 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe published a book on how to develop curriculum titled, Understanding by Design. In 1999, they followed up their first volume with The Understanding by Design Handbook (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development).  The quotations that describe the facets of understanding are from the Handbook, p. 10.

Facets of Understanding

Wiggins and McTighe describe the overarching goal of teaching and learning as understanding, which has six facets. When we understand, we...

...Can Explain | We can "provide thorough, supported, and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data."

...Can Interpret | To interpret is to relate our learning in terms of a stories, analogies, images, or to "offer apt translations."

...Can Apply | We can use what we understand in various contexts.

...Have Perspective | We have enough distance on something to see the pros and cons of different points of view and to "see the big picture."

...Can Empathize | We can find value in a point of view that is not our own and relate that alternative viewpoint to our own experience.

...Have Self-Knowledge | With self-knowledge, we begin to know (1) how we know and (2) what we don't know. We can "perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede one's understanding."

Three Levels of Learning

Enduring Understanding

Wiggins and McTighe point out that in any teaching and learning process, some small part of what occurs can be called deep or enduring understanding. What will you remember—what about a class will be "in your bones"—six months after the last test is taken and the last paper is turned in? These are the enduring understandings of the class.

Important Knowledge and Skills

Along the way to enduring understanding, you pick up knowledge and skills that are important for tasks you want to accomplish, but which may not stick with you if you don't continue to use what you have learned. Continued practice over time can move this kind of knowledge and skill-development to the realm of enduring understanding. When this happens, we say that something is "second nature" to us. If we leave it for a while and return to it, we find it's "like riding a bike."

Knowledge Worth Being Familiar With

Finally, every class or learning project includes things that are interesting and offer background, but which are are less important to store in long term memory than other things from the class. Knowing that some manuscripts are housed in the British Museum is interesting and lends a sense of reality to the production of the New Testament.  Remembering precisely which ones are there is only important if you are doing advanced text critical work and don't want to buy a plane ticket to the wrong city.

What does this mean for you? Learning Goals FAQ

On the first introductory page for each skill, I have included a list of enduring understandings, essential questions and key knowledge and skills I hope the unit offers you. All together, these are the learning goals for the unit.

"What if I don't like your goals?"

Of course, you may have different goals than those I've listed, or you may learn things that neither of us thought of beforehand. Even so, I thought you might like to see the learning goals that were in my mind as I prepared introductory material and developed exegetical problems for you.

"Do I have to slog through all this 'learning goals' stuff before I get to open the Bible?"

Nope. Not at all. If you want to go right to the exegetical problems without reading about a lesson's learning goals, that's fine. If, at some point, you find yourself asking, "What the heck is going on?" with a particular problem, the learning goals will provide you with a window on what I've been aiming for. 

Do I ever have to pay attention to learning goals?

Well, I'm hoping that at least at one point, you'll want to pay attention to the goals. When you get to the step in your exegetical problem where you assess learning, I will ask you to assess your learning against the goals for the section you have been working in.