Teaching for Understanding : Linking Research with Practice

This book presents an innovative approach to teaching that helps students acquire and use knowledge in ways that go beyond rote memorization of facts and figures--to develop a level of understanding that will serve them well throughout their lives. Based on a six-year collaborative research project of school teachers and researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the book describes what teaching for understanding looks like in the classroom, and examines how teachers have learned to use it. Part One: Foundations of Teaching for Understanding 1. Why Do We Need a Pedagogy of Understanding? Vito Perrone 2. What is Understanding? David Perkins Part Two: Teaching for Understanding in the Classroom 3. What is Teaching for Understanding? Martha Stone Wiske 4. How Do Teachers Learn to Teach for Understanding? Martha Stone Wiske, Karen Hammerness, Daniel Gray Wilson 5. How Does Teaching for Understanding Look in Practice? Ron Ritchart, Martha Stone Wiske, Eric Buchovecky, Lois Hetland Part Three: Students' Understanding in the Classroom 6. What Are the Qualities of Understanding? Veronica Boix Mansilla, Howard Gardner 7. How Do Students Demonstrate Understanding? Lois Hetland, Karen Hammerness, Chris Unger, Daniel Gray Wilson 8. What Do Students in Teaching for Understanding Classrooms Understand? Karen Hammerness, Rosario Jaramillo, Chris Unger, Daniel Gray Wilson 9. What Do Students Think About Understanding? Chris Unger and Daniel Gray Wilson with Rosario Jaramillo and Roger Dempsey Part Four: Promoting Teaching for Understanding 10. How Can We Prepare New Teachers? Vito Perrone 11. How Can Teaching for Understanding Be ExtAnded in Schools? Martha Stone Wiske, Lois Hetland, Eric Buchovecky Conclusion: Melding Progressive and Traditional Perspectives Howard Gardner Martha Stone Wiske is a lecturer and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she co-directs the Educational Techono

MARTHA STONE WISKE is a lecturer and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she co-directs the Educational Techonology Center. She is the coeditor of Software Goes to School: Teaching for Understanding with New Technologies (1995).