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

About the Author
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).

Reviews
"This book is equal parts theory and practice. It is a superb example of what educators in universities and schools can accomplish when they engage in sincere efforts to benefit students." --Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

"A remarkable work, conceptually bold and practical. It makes the best of contemporary practices seem eminently reasonable, while also offering a framework for making teaching for understanding accessible to our teachers." --Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas and founder, Central Park East Public Schools, East Harlem, New York

"At last, a new volume from a team of scholars at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Project Zero that takes teaching, learning, and understanding, as both theory and practice. My congratulations to Howard Gardner, David Perkins, and Vito Perrone for a project well-conceived and well-conducted, and to Stone Wiske for a useful, educator-friendly book." --Lee S. Shulman, president, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

"As the authors acknowledge, teaching for understanding is an old idea and a simple one. But their lucid and thorough exploration of it is fresh and richly generative--and compelling too, in a way reserved for ideas that seem as practical as they are provocative. A whole range of people who care about teaching will be drawn to this book, and they will be well served." --Joe McDonald, director of research, Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University



Book Information
ISBN 9780787910020
Author Martha Stone Wiske
Format Hardback
Page Count 400
Imprint Jossey-Bass Inc.,U.S.
Publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc
Weight(grams) 658g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 158mm * 25mm