Understanding by Design
Understanding by Design (UbD) is a comprehensive framework for curriculum, assessment, and instruction design in education, developed by educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe and first published in 1998 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).[1] Rooted in mid-20th-century principles from Ralph Tyler's Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949), UbD emphasizes a "backward design" process that begins with identifying desired learning results—such as enduring understandings and essential questions—before planning assessments and instructional activities to promote transfer of knowledge to new contexts.[1] This approach aims to shift teaching from coverage of content to fostering genuine student understanding, demonstrated through authentic performances like explanations, applications, and self-assessments across six facets: explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.[2] The framework is structured around three core stages to guide educators in creating aligned and effective learning experiences. In Stage 1, teachers establish goals based on standards, focusing on big ideas, transfer tasks, and provocative questions that drive inquiry.[2] Stage 2 involves determining evidence of understanding through a balanced mix of performance tasks, prompts, and other assessments that provide ongoing feedback and align directly with the goals.[3] Finally, Stage 3 outlines the learning plan, using tools like the WHERETO sieve (Where students are, Hook, Equip, Rethink, Evaluate, Tailor, Organize) to sequence activities that build knowledge, skills, and habits of mind for meaningful application.[3] UbD rests on seven key tenets that underscore its research-based foundation in cognitive psychology and studies of high student achievement. These include the importance of purposeful planning to deepen understanding, the role of teachers as coaches rather than lecturers, and the need for ongoing curriculum review and refinement based on student performance data.[2] Widely adopted in K-12 and higher education settings, such as university programs developing inquiry-based lessons aligned with state standards, UbD has influenced standards-based reforms by prioritizing rigorous, engaging curricula over rote memorization.[3] An expanded second edition of the foundational book, released in 2005, further refined templates and addressed implementation in high-stakes accountability environments.[2]History and Development
Origins and Creators
The Understanding by Design (UbD) framework was developed in 1998 by educational consultants Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe as a direct response to the limitations of traditional curriculum planning approaches, such as "textbook coverage" and activity-oriented teaching, which often prioritized superficial content delivery over meaningful student understanding.[4] This collaborative effort aimed to shift educational design toward outcomes-focused planning that emphasizes enduring understandings and transfer of knowledge. The framework was first detailed in their seminal book, Understanding by Design, published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).[5] Grant Wiggins, a leading advocate for authentic and performance-based assessment, brought extensive experience in reforming evaluation practices to promote deeper learning; his prior work included authoring Educative Assessment (1998), which critiqued standardized testing and championed assessments aligned with real-world application.[6] Jay McTighe complemented this with his deep expertise in curriculum development and instructional design, honed through roles such as director of the Maryland Assessment Consortium, where he facilitated collaborations among school districts to improve assessment and teaching strategies.[7] Their partnership, facilitated through ASCD—a professional organization dedicated to advancing educational leadership—enabled the integration of assessment and curriculum expertise into a cohesive model. Wiggins died on May 26, 2015, after which McTighe has continued to advance the framework.[8][5] UbD drew foundational influences from earlier educational theories to address gaps in promoting deeper understanding. Notably, it adapted Ralph Tyler's 1949 objectives-based curriculum model, which emphasized starting with desired educational outcomes—a principle central to UbD's backward design logic—while extending it to prioritize transferable skills over rote objectives.[9] These influences, combined with insights from cognitive psychology, positioned UbD as an evolution tailored to contemporary educational challenges.[4]Key Publications
The foundational text for the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework is the 1998 book Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), which introduced the core principles of backward design and the emphasis on student-centered understanding in curriculum planning.[10] This initial publication outlined the framework's structure, including the three stages of backward design and the six facets of understanding, establishing UbD as a practical approach for educators to align curriculum, assessment, and instruction.[11] In 2005, Wiggins and McTighe released an expanded second edition of Understanding by Design, also published by ASCD, which incorporated feedback from educators and refined key elements such as the UbD template for unit design, providing a more robust set of tools for implementation.[11] This edition addressed common challenges in applying the framework, expanded on performance assessments, and included additional examples to support its use across grade levels and subjects.[12] Building on the original work, Wiggins and McTighe extended the UbD principles to broader organizational levels in their 2007 book Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement, published by ASCD, which applies the framework to school-wide mission development, goal setting, and systemic improvement.[13] The book emphasizes aligning school actions with desired student outcomes, integrating UbD into leadership and policy decisions to foster environments conducive to deep learning.[14] A complementary publication, Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding (2013) by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, published by ASCD, delves into the role of inquiry-driven questioning within the UbD framework, offering strategies for crafting questions that promote enduring understanding and transfer of knowledge.[15] This work highlights how essential questions can anchor curriculum units, drawing directly from UbD's foundational ideas to enhance student engagement and critical thinking.[16] As of 2025, ongoing resources supporting UbD are maintained through McTighe & Associates and ASCD, including downloadable templates for unit planning, online learning modules, curriculum design software, and professional development materials that evolve the framework with contemporary educational needs.[17] These tools, such as the UbD Exchange platform and updated guides, provide educators with accessible, digital aids for applying and refining UbD practices.[18]Core Concepts
Backward Design
Backward design is a curriculum planning framework introduced by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe that prioritizes the identification of desired learning outcomes before selecting instructional activities or resources.[5] In this approach, educators begin by clarifying what students should understand and be able to do at the end of a unit or course, then derive assessments and teaching strategies to support those goals.[2] This method stands in contrast to traditional forward design, where planning often commences with textbooks, lectures, or predefined activities, which can result in unclear objectives and assessments that fail to measure true understanding.[5] Forward design risks emphasizing content coverage over meaningful application, whereas backward design enforces a deliberate focus on end goals to avoid such misalignment.[2] The primary rationale for backward design is to foster alignment across curriculum elements—ensuring that assessments and instruction directly support the development of transferrable understanding, where students can apply knowledge in new contexts rather than merely recalling facts.[5] By anchoring planning in enduring outcomes, it promotes coherence that enhances student performance and long-term retention.[2] Central to backward design are three key elements: enduring understandings, which represent the core, lasting ideas students should retain beyond a specific unit, such as the principle that "effective nutrition involves balancing macronutrients for sustained health"; essential questions, open-ended inquiries that drive exploration and connect to big ideas, like "How do cultural contexts shape dietary choices?"; and performance tasks, authentic assessments that require students to demonstrate understanding through application, such as designing a meal plan for a diverse group.[5] These anchors guide the overall process, which unfolds in three stages: identifying desired results, determining acceptable evidence, and planning learning experiences.[2]Six Facets of Understanding
The six facets of understanding—explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge—serve as key indicators for assessing and fostering deep, transferable comprehension in learners, shifting focus from superficial recall to sophisticated, multifaceted insights.[2] Developed within the Understanding by Design framework, these facets emphasize autonomous sense-making and application in authentic contexts, enabling educators to design experiences that promote enduring understanding rather than rote memorization.[2] Each facet represents a distinct dimension of understanding:- Explain: Learners articulate concepts clearly in their own words, justify claims with evidence, and demonstrate reasoning to teach others effectively.[2]
- Interpret: Learners uncover meaning from information by creating analogies, stories, models, or interpretations that connect ideas to broader contexts.[2]
- Apply: Learners deploy knowledge flexibly and effectively in unfamiliar situations, adapting skills to solve real-world problems.[2]
- Perspective: Learners critically examine events, ideas, or issues from multiple viewpoints, recognizing biases and alternative interpretations to grasp the "big picture."[2]
- Empathy: Learners perceive sensitively from others' emotional or cultural standpoints, fostering understanding of diverse experiences and motivations.[2]
- Self-knowledge: Learners reflect metacognitively on their own assumptions, strengths, and limitations, monitoring and adjusting their learning processes.[2]
The Backward Design Process
Stage 1: Identify Desired Results
Stage 1 of the Understanding by Design framework centers on clarifying the intended learning outcomes by establishing clear goals rooted in content standards and prioritizing elements that promote deep, transferable understanding.[2] This initial phase requires educators to examine national, state, district, or provincial standards to identify established goals, which outline what students should know, understand, and be able to do at the end of instruction.[19] For instance, in a social studies unit on westward expansion, goals might include comprehending the motivations for migration and applying historical analysis skills.[19] A key component is identifying big ideas—broad, conceptual anchors that connect specific content to larger disciplinary principles—and deriving enduring understandings from them.[2] Enduring understandings are core insights with lasting value, designed to extend beyond the unit and foster transfer of learning; they represent the "aha" realizations students should retain, such as "Democracy requires informed citizens who actively participate in civic life."[5] Another example is "Great literature explores universal themes that resonate across cultures and time," which helps students connect narratives to broader human experiences.[2] To guide exploration of these understandings, educators frame essential questions, which are open-ended, provocative inquiries that spark curiosity and drive ongoing investigation.[2] These questions avoid simple yes/no answers and encourage students to uncover big ideas through evidence and reasoning; examples include "What makes a democracy effective?" or "How does geography influence cultural development?"[2] Essential questions serve as the unit's intellectual compass, reframed as needed to maintain relevance.[19] Prioritization is essential in this stage to address curriculum time constraints, involving a filtering process that emphasizes transferable knowledge and skills over isolated facts.[2] Educators use a layered approach to sort content: focusing deepest on enduring understandings for meaning-making and transfer, addressing important knowledge and skills (e.g., key facts like pioneer vocabulary or calculating geometric volumes) for performance support, and treating peripheral details as merely worth familiarity.[20] This ensures units target high-impact outcomes aligned with standards, avoiding superficial coverage.[19] The UbD unit planning template (version 2.0) structures this goal-setting, with dedicated sections for established goals, enduring understandings, essential questions, and targeted knowledge/skills, enabling educators to map and refine results systematically.[2][21] By completing this stage, teachers create a focused foundation for subsequent design phases, ensuring all elements align with the pursuit of meaningful understanding.[5]Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 2 of the Understanding by Design framework focuses on identifying the evidence needed to determine whether students have achieved the desired results established in Stage 1, prompting educators to "think like assessors" by prioritizing valid measures of understanding over mere recall. This phase ensures that assessments are purposefully designed to capture performance aligned with essential questions, big ideas, and learning goals, using a variety of evidence sources to build a comprehensive picture of student proficiency. By emphasizing evidence of transfer and deep comprehension, Stage 2 bridges curriculum goals with demonstrable outcomes, avoiding the common pitfall of planning activities before clarifying assessment criteria.[2][19] Evidence in Stage 2 spans a continuum of assessments, from traditional tools like quizzes, tests, observations, and work samples—which primarily gauge knowledge acquisition and basic skills—to more sophisticated methods such as portfolios, peer reviews, journals, and self-assessments that reveal ongoing reflection and growth. This variety allows educators to triangulate data, ensuring no single measure dominates while addressing different levels of cognitive demand. For example, a quiz might verify factual recall, whereas a journal entry could evidence self-knowledge through student reflections on their learning process. Alignment with Stage 1 is paramount: all evidence must directly correspond to the identified goals, essential understandings, and the six facets of understanding (explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge), preventing gaps in coverage and ensuring assessments probe meaningful application rather than superficial coverage. A project task, for instance, might require students to interpret historical data from multiple perspectives to demonstrate both the interpret and perspective facets.[2][22][19] Central to Stage 2 are performance tasks, which are complex, authentic activities simulating real-world scenarios to assess students' ability to transfer learning to novel situations. These tasks go beyond rote exercises by requiring integration of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind, often structured using the GRASPS prompt (Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Performance task, Standards) to make them engaging and relevant. In a science unit on light refraction, for example, students might role-play as engineers designing a model to predict light behavior in different mediums, constructing evidence-based explanations from observations—thus evidencing application and explanation facets. Such tasks prioritize depth over breadth, fostering demonstrations of understanding through open-ended challenges like simulations, debates, or design projects that mirror professional or civic demands.[23][22][19] Assessments in this stage must meet rigorous criteria for quality: validity, ensuring the evidence truly reflects the targeted understandings and avoids assessing unintended elements; reliability, achieved through consistent scoring via detailed rubrics that use scales (e.g., 4-point levels for thoroughness or accuracy) and multiple data sources; and fairness, promoting equitable access and bias-free evaluation for diverse learners. Rubrics typically include criteria like content accuracy, process effectiveness, and result quality (e.g., convincing or creative outputs), providing specific feedback to guide improvement. These standards ensure assessments are not only fair but also instructionally useful, informing adjustments to teaching while confirming student mastery.[2][22]Stage 3: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
Stage 3 of the Understanding by Design framework focuses on developing a coherent plan for learning experiences and instruction that supports students in achieving the desired results identified in Stage 1 and demonstrating the evidence of understanding outlined in Stage 2.[2] Educators design activities that actively engage learners in making meaning, acquiring essential knowledge and skills, and transferring their understanding to new situations, ensuring all elements align directly with the unit's goals and assessments.[19] Central to this stage is the WHERETO framework, an acronym that guides the creation of effective and engaging instructional plans.[2] Developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, WHERETO prompts educators to address key design questions systematically.[19] The elements include:- W: Where are we going? This involves clarifying the unit's goals, linking them to essential questions, and explaining the purpose to help students see the relevance of their learning.[2]
- H: How will we hook and hold interest? Activities begin with compelling hooks, such as provocative questions or real-world problems, to spark curiosity and sustain motivation throughout the unit.[19]
- E: How will we equip students? Instruction provides the necessary knowledge, skills, and tools through direct teaching, modeling, and guided practice to prepare students for deeper exploration.[2]
- R: How will we encourage rethinking and revising? Opportunities for reflection, critique, and adjustment allow students to refine their initial ideas and address misconceptions.[19]
- E: How will students evaluate their work? Built-in self-assessment and peer feedback mechanisms enable students to monitor their progress and understand the criteria for success.[2]
- T: How will we tailor to individual needs? Differentiation adapts activities to accommodate diverse learners, such as varying complexity or providing multiple entry points, while keeping the focus on core understandings.[19]
- O: How will we organize for optimal engagement? The sequence of activities follows a logical progression, often from exploration of essential questions to application and transfer, ensuring a coherent flow that builds toward performance tasks.[2]