Facet 1 - Explanation

How is it defined? Sophisticated and apt explanations and theories, which provide knowledgeable and justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas

How is this understanding translated into action? A student can explain by: providing thorough, supported, and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data.

What criteria can describe this understanding? accurate, coherent, justified, systematic, credible, predictive, insightful, illuminating

In what manner might this understanding be demonstrated? A cook explains why adding a little mustard to oil and vinegar enables them to mix. The mustard acts as an emulsifier.

An 8th grade history student provides a well-supported view of the economic and political reasons why West Virginia became a state.

What might an example of a lack of this understanding look like? A 6th grade science student can list the organs in the digestive system but not how they function or work together.

What are common misconceptions about mastery of this understanding? If the student gives a correct answer to a complex and demanding question, he must have an in- depth understanding. (Right answers, even with documentation, could be merely borrowed and regurgitated, but not truly understood.)

If a student cannot write an explanation of her views, she lacks understanding. (A student’s writing ability, or lack of it, has nothing to do with her level of understanding – and may require that she be given the opportunity to demonstrate understanding orally or through another form of communication.)

What are the implications for instruction and assessment? Instructionally we need to strive for balance between knowledge dispersion and theory building. A simple example is to make sure that students ask and seek personal answers to the same 5 “W” + “H” questions that journalists ask : who, what, where, when, why and how

Assessment calls for performance tasks, projects, prompts, and tests that ask students to explain how specific facts tie in to larger ideas and to justify their connections by showing their work and supporting their conclusions.

How does possessing this facet of understanding enhance a teacher’s acceptance of students and their emotions? The teacher should have a grasp of human psychology (child development, research on learning, and misconceptions). http://reinvent.k12.wv.us/lt/ipml/ltactivity.nsf/forPrinting/FFDA9CFA069260AE85256D9700 113AC4?OpenDocument Facet 2 - Interpretation

How is it defined? Interpretations, narratives, and translations that provide meaning

How is this understanding translated into action? A student can interpret by: telling meaningful stories; offering apt translations; providing a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; making it personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models.

What criteria can describe this understanding? meaningful, insightful, significant, illustrative, illuminating

In what manner might this understanding be demonstrated? A grandfather tells stories about the Depression to illustrate the importance of saving for a rainy day.

An 8th grader shows how The Phantom Tollbooth represents a person or group in society thinking that they are more important that another instead of realizing that all are interdependent; it’s not just an amusing story about whether words or numbers are more useful.

What might an example of a lack of this understanding look like? A 6th grade student can recite the meaning of each of his geography vocabulary words, but cannot locate the features on a map.

What are common misconceptions about mastery of this understanding? If the student offers an engaged and rich response to literature, he understands that work of literature. (A flowery, thoughtful, or fluent response can contain shallow, unsubstantiated or erroneous interpretations while a seemingly sparse, detached explanation can concisely penetrate the meaning of a work’s important ideas.)

What are the implications for instruction and assessment? Teaching this facet requires instructional strategies that are similar to the other facets in that it requires educating students to think intelligently to build stories and interpretations, not just passively take notes and return them to the teacher as their own thoughts. They need to see how knowledge is personally constructed “from the inside”.

Assessment of interpretation also calls for performance tasks, projects, prompts, and tests that ask students to interpret facts and make connections which allow them to infer meaningful generalizations of their own.

How does possessing this facet of understanding enhance a teacher’s acceptance of students and their emotions? The teacher will have the ability to grasp the meaning of classroom behavior and performance in terms of individual student lives and understandings. http://reinvent.k12.wv.us/lt/ipml/ltactivity.nsf/forPrinting/FFDA9CFA069260AE85256D9700 113AC4?OpenDocument Facet 3 - Application

How is it defined? Ability to use knowledge effectively in new situations and diverse contexts

How is this understanding translated into action? A student can apply by: effectively using and adapting what he or she knows in diverse contexts

What criteria can describe this understanding? effective, efficient, fluent, adaptive, graceful, realistic, diverse, innovative

In what manner might this understanding be demonstrated? A young teacher uses his knowledge of compounded interest and credit cards to develop an effective financial plan for saving and investing.

7th grade students use their knowledge of statistics to accurately project next year’s costs and needs for the student–run school store.

What might an example of a lack of this understanding look like? A physics professor cannot diagnose and fix a broken lamp.

What are common misconceptions about mastery of this understanding? Any effective performance with knowledge indicates understanding of that knowledge and/or any ineffective performance with knowledge indicates a lack of understanding of that knowledge. (A lack of skill and or practice can hamper a good performance, but that does not necessarily mean that the student doesn’t understand what it takes to perform well. A good performance may be a result of rehearsal without understanding the underlying strategies or purposes. Think of a sport commentator who can do play-by-play and explain the strategies of a football game, but lacks the physique and talent to play the game professionally.)

What are the implications for instruction and assessment? Developing a student’s ability to apply requires that we ask them to “walk the walk, not just talk the talk” and it means that teachers must realize that application is different from knowledge and simple comprehension. Students must be given opportunities to customize what they know to perform new tasks, not just plug their knowledge into predictable formulas. An assessment of application requires that students address a “problem” or simulation that is as close to an uncontrolled real life situation as possible and requires reaction to unanticipated incidents or discrepant events. Authentic assessments such as these must supplement more typical exams.

How does possessing this facet of understanding enhance a teacher’s acceptance of students and their emotions? The teacher can effectively use the ideas and tools of Backward Design to design learning experiences that meet the diversity of learning styles, natural intelligences, and styles of understanding in the various students in his/her classes. http://reinvent.k12.wv.us/lt/ipml/ltactivity.nsf/forPrinting/FFDA9CFA069260AE85256D9700 113AC4?OpenDocument Facet 4 - Perspective

How is it defined? Critical and insightful points of view

How is this understanding translated into action? A student can show perspective by: seeing and hearing points of view through critical eyes and ears; seeing the big picture

What criteria can describe this understanding? credible, revealing, insightful, plausible, unusual, critical in an analytical sense

In what manner might this understanding be demonstrated? An 11 year old boy recognizes in TV advertising the fallacy of using popular sports figures to promote products. A 7th grade students explains the Israeli and Palestinian arguments for and against new settlements on the Gaza Strip.

What might an example of a lack of this understanding look like? A bright student is too rigid to consider that there are other points of view about gun control or abortion.

What are common misconceptions about mastery of this understanding? Having an opinion equals having perspective or that perspective implies total relativism. (Just because a view is plausible or well argued does not mean that it is correct. Conversely, just because a critical argument can be made against a viewpoint does not mean that it doesn’t have merit. All theories are not equal and criticism is the only way of getting beyond relativism but such perspective can be threatening to people who are authoritarian or narrowly orthodox.)

What are the implications for instruction and assessment? Developing perspective in the classroom means helping students to see the larger global view, and forcing them to step outside their own narrow realm of experience. It may involve asking “What of it?” and to consider answers from authorities such as teachers or textbooks as merely “points of view” to be examined. It requires bringing to light hidden biases by casting familiar things in a new light and providing explicit opportunities for students to confront alternative theories and diverse big ideas.

Assessing a student’s perspective means asking means asking them to take an idea, examine it skeptically and compare alternative opinions. They may be asked to analyze something such as an editorial essay, a piece of artwork or a scientific theory and present it from a different perspective or style.

How does possessing this facet of understanding enhance a teacher’s acceptance of students and their emotions? The teacher uses sophisticated classroom management and has the ability to see the plausibility as well as the weakness in diverse student ideas and responses. http://reinvent.k12.wv.us/lt/ipml/ltactivity.nsf/forPrinting/FFDA9CFA069260AE85256D9700 113AC4?OpenDocument Facet 5 - Empathy

How is it defined? The ability to get inside another person’s feelings and worldview

How is this understanding translated into action? A student can show empathy by: finding value in what others might find odd, alien or implausible; perceiving sensitively on the basis of prior direct experience

What criteria can describe this understanding? sensitive, open, receptive, perceptive, insightful, tactful

In what manner might this understanding be demonstrated? An affluent suburban white student empathizes with the poverty and lack of educational opportunities that permeate the existence of his black and Hispanic peers in the inner city. Ask a student studying the Civil War to assume the role a young slave girl on a plantation and express her mixed feelings about the Union soldiers who are marching into her community.

What might an example of a lack of this understanding look like? A former college football superstar constantly yells at the middle school players on the team he is helping coach because he cannot relate to their problems learning to play the game.

What are common misconceptions about mastery of this understanding? Empathy is synonymous with sympathy or heartfelt rapport and requires agreement with the point of view in question. (Empathy is not the same as sympathy. It is a disciplined effort to understand what is different, not “feel” what others feel. Understanding others’ thoughts does not mean agreement, only recognizing why the ideas are relevant or meaningful to them.)

What are the implications for instruction and assessment? Empathy requires escaping one’s own emotional reactions to “understand” where someone else is “coming from”. It is a learned ability to observe with an open-mind to try to connect strange ideas with familiar ones. Students need to confront the effects of historical events, cultural practices and controversial philosophies and rethink their views based on a deeper understanding of situations and circumstances To assess empathy involves having students reexamine fables, controversial scientific ideas and historical writings in a manner that overcomes their egocentrism, ethnocentrism and present-centered views and encourages them to understand why they were written. Students need to develop the ability to see the plausibility in outdated or unusual ideas.

How does possessing this facet of understanding enhance a teacher’s acceptance of students and their emotions? The teacher is sensitive to the insecurity of novice learners and uses tactful responses to naïve questions or novel ideas. http://reinvent.k12.wv.us/lt/ipml/ltactivity.nsf/forPrinting/FFDA9CFA069260AE85256D9700 113AC4?OpenDocument Facet 6 – Self-Knowledge

How is it defined? The wisdom to know one’s ignorance and how one’s patterns of thought and action inform as well as prejudice understanding

How is this understanding translated into action? A student can show self-knowledge by: perceiving the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede his/her own understanding; being aware of what he/she does not understand and why understanding is so hard.

What criteria can describe this understanding? self-aware, meta-cognitive, self-adjusting, reflective, wise, mature

In what manner might this understanding be demonstrated? A mother realizes that her frustration with her daughter’s shyness is rooted in issues from her own childhood.

A middle school teacher deliberately includes graphic organizers, visual images and physical models because he is mindful of the fact that many students are visual learners.

What might an example of a lack of this understanding look like? “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” (Sometimes what we think we understand is merely a mental habit projected onto reality.)

What are common misconceptions about mastery of this understanding? Self-knowledge equals self-centeredness. (In reality, it is the exact opposite, when we know ourselves, we know our limits and are far less likely to confuse our views with those of others or our knowledge with our prejudices.)

What are the implications for instruction and assessment? We as teachers must pay greater attention and do a better job of teaching and assessing self- reflection. We tend to stress metacognition and awareness of one’s personal learning style, but almost ignore “epistemology”, the philosophy that addresses what it means to know and understand. We do not teach students how knowledge differs from belief and opinion.

We as teachers must practice accurate self-assessment and self-regulation and accept feedback and criticism without defensiveness. We must model for students how to question one’s own personal convictions, sort out mere strong belief and habit from warranted knowledge and be intellectually honest enough to admit our own ignorance and encourage students to do the same without fear of repercussion or embarrassment.

How does possessing this facet of understanding enhance a teacher’s acceptance of students and their emotions? The teacher has awareness of his or her own prejudice, biases, and projected feelings toward different students and ways of learning. http://reinvent.k12.wv.us/lt/ipml/ltactivity.nsf/forPrinting/FFDA9CFA069260AE85256D9700 113AC4?OpenDocument