What you'll learn

What is understanding, and why should it be an important goal of education today?
If understanding is the goal, what should we be teaching? That is, what things are most important for students to understand?
How can we design learning experiences that support students in learning for understanding?
How can we create a reflective online professional community that supports our own understanding of how to teach and learn for understanding?

Course description

As educators, we seek to prepare our students for the future — to equip them with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that will help them become productive, reflective, responsible members of their communities as they move into adulthood. But none of us can predict the kind of future that awaits them. So how do we shape learning experiences that prepare our students for an uncertain future?

It is not enough for educators to simply to relay information or skills to our students; we must help them understand how to apply their knowledge and skills in situations that they have never encountered before. In this course participants will learn to use the Teaching for Understanding framework as a tool for shaping curriculum and classroom experiences that help students develop this kind of robust and transferable understanding.

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