Understanding Understanding

Distinction between knowledge and understanding

(cf. Benchmarks for scientific literacy) Terminology used to refer to understanding, action verbs,
confusing because up to interpretation.
Know/Can do => Using their knowledge
Understanding as meaningful inferences
Dewey (How We Think)=> Understanding = making sense of knowledge / seeing its implications
(within the broader structure of knowledge as a whole)
Seeing patterns, knowledge = tiles, facts & understanding is more fluid and affects the structure of
knowledge, reinvents knowledge through a plurality of understandings => interpretation
Putting knowledge to use to solve a problem ? Developing strategies (transferability)
Appropriate knowledge (marshall skills and explain why), discretionary approach.
Understanding is not knowledge for knowledge's sake.
Understanding as transferability :
Help them transfer and question knowledge => meta-knowledge skills ? strategies.
What to do ? teach and assess on an ability to see patterns, no fact-based assessments.
A single strategy underlies all possible combinations => From the unique to the plural~
Coverage may be detrimental to learning and subsequent transfer => too much density, not
enough time to process. Focusing on main ideas, no coverage, no inert ideas, need to put knowledge
to use.
Understanding = processing knowledge and structuring it so as to make it transferable
Understanding requires that students think critically about their thought process
field of knowledge => elements of knowledge make sense because they can be tied back into
the broader structure of knowledge.
The main goal of teaching is to teach transferability, not simply nor primarily knowledge.
The Expert Blind Spot.
Bruner => Coverage is uneconomical.
Teaching is different from learning (not the same strategies)
Uncoverage => helps students memorize because they connect the set of facts , they develop
their strategies.
Hard to rethink earlier knowledge.
From coverage to uncoverage p. 46
The evidence of understanding.
dig below the surface => hidden gem of insight.
Teachers have to uncover the value of concepts (transparence, relevance of the concept within the
broad structure of knowledge).
Three stages in ensuring understanding :
What will students come away understanding ? (be specific, define the understandings

beforehand)
What will count as evidence of that understanding ? (appropriate performance and products
from students of that learning) => 1. Type of student work / 2. what should we look for in student
performance (rubrics?) ?
Importance of phrasing (goal is different from evidence), directions are not enough, a mere action
verb will not necessarily clarify/make transparent the teacher's goal.
Assessments should focus on students' ability to transfer their knowledge and apply the abstraction
in a practical way (what does that mean really?)
Assessments should be based on core tasks and not mere restitution.
Students should have a discretionary approach to knowledge, which these tasks will require.
The apparent understanding issue => tests are a cat and mouse game => fact-based tests, get it right
for the sake of it. Assessment-wise, ensuring understanding calls for conceptual benchmarks, not
just performance abilities.
Student misunderstanding and what we can learn from it
Misunderstanding is the mapping of a working idea in a plausible but incorrect way in a new
situation. Misunderstanding requires knowledge and transferability.
Distinction between learning basic principles and applying knowledge or explain what they learned.
The quest for understanding => it is a quest, a process, gradual.
Misunderstandings always conceals a form of logic, they are indicative of the various steps in the
process of understanding.

make headway
ferret (as a verb) / ferret out the key impediments
falling prey to the Expert Blind sport
dampening future attempts
larklike days in the life of a hooky-playing prep school student
igneous fusion
strikes home
trip sb up
a stark gap