Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids

Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction are currently the subject of many educational conversations, both in the United States and abroad. Certainly part of the reason for the high level of interest in the two approaches to curriculum and teaching is their logical and practical appeal. Beset by lists of content standards and accompanying “high-stakes” accountability tests, many educators sense that both teaching and learning have been redirected in ways that are potentially impoverishing for those who teach and those who learn. Educators need a model that acknowledges the centrality of standards but that also demonstrates how meaning and understanding can both emanate from and frame content standards so that young people develop powers of mind as well as accumulate an information base. For many educators, Understanding by Design addresses that need. Simultaneously, teachers find it increasingly difficult to ignore the diversity of learners who populate their classrooms. Culture, race, language, economics, gender, experience, motivation to achieve, disability, advanced ability, personal interests, learning preferences, and presence or absence of an adult support system are just some of the factors that students bring to school with them in almost stunning variety. Few teachers find their work effective or satisfying when they simply “serve up” a curriculum—even an elegant one—to their students with no regard for their varied learning needs. For many educators, Differentiated Instruction offers a framework for addressing learner variance as a critical component of instructional planning. That a convergence of the two models seems useful for addressing two of the greatest contemporary challenges for educators—crafting powerful curriculum in a standards-dominated era and ensuring academic success for the full spectrum of learners—is gratifying. The purpose of this book, however, is to move the conversations beyond a sense of “intuitive fit” to a more grounded exploration of why each of the models is potentially significant in today's classrooms—and why their partnership is not only reasonable but essential wherever teachers strive to help each student develop his or her maximum capacity. With that goal in mind, we will first present a straightforward explanation of why the two models should be linked in the classroom. Then we will provide a set of axioms and corollaries that demonstrate important links between the two models. (Key theory and research that support UbD and DI can be found in the appendix.)