NAME: PASTIDIO, VIVIAN S.

BEED 4 C4

Beyond Understanding, Teach for Transfer

(SUMMARY)
Teachers who still teach for facts are making themselves redundant. Schools
no longer have a need for teachers who will simply give or ask for facts that anyone
can easily obtain from the internet.

Almost three decades ago, the bureau of Secondary Education of DepEd

conducted a study on the levels of thinking in the classroom in the subject areas of
the curriculum. The result was profoundly disturbing as it revealed the general
tendency among teachers to teach for facts, rather than for thinking. Dismaying the
practice has persisted over the years. The intellectual climate in the classroom has
not gone above the level of rote learning. Theres apparent disconnect between
teaching practice and intention. Acquisition of knowledge is the be-all and end-all of
teaching and learning, and recall becomes the hallmark of intellectual achievement.
Results of national and international assessments confirm the students poor
conceptual understanding. This learning deficiency points to the weak emphasis of
teaching and learning on critical thinking as an essential skill.

The 2002 Basic Education Curriculum sought to promote constructivism as a

pedagogical philosophy, but rarely did teachers gave their students the opportunity
to talk about the meaning that that they should have constructed. Education should
not aim for mere acquisition of information.

In the K-12 program, teachers are expected to anchor their teaching on the
cognitive process dimensions or the revised Blooms Taxonomy (D.O No.8, s.2015)
the goal being the development of the thinking process and to enable students to
construct or make their own meanings. This is why in every class the one question
that every teacher asks every so often is Do you understand? Enabling students
to understand is the goal of every teaching. It needs to be clarified that
understanding as a thinking process is different from understanding referred to in
D.O. No.73, s.2012, which is outcome of thinking. The two levels are therefore not

the same nor are they parallel. A critique of the Revised Blooms Taxonomy may be
useful here:

Understandings are a very deep or at least complex endeavor and not in any
way a lower-order skill as the revised taxonomy suggest (Blythe et.al., 1998; Keene,
2008 as cited in Ritchhart et al., 2011). Research into understanding is not a
precursor to application, analysis, evaluating, and creating. Teachers are encourage
to teach and assess as much as possible all the levels of thinking covered in the
Revised Blooms Taxonomy. Thinking doesnt happen in a lockstep, sequential
manner, systematically progressing from one level to the next.

The standards and the competencies should still be the teachers guide in
determining what cognitive operations the students should be expected to perform
or undertake in order to develop understanding.

How Does One teach and Check For Understanding?

Begin with then end in mind (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). This means being
clear about what you want students to understand at the end of the lesson. Thus,
you will plan your lesson with this understanding in mind. Here are the steps how
you will facilitate the development of the understanding:

First, identify the facts and information that students need to acquire. Next,
determine the skills that students will need in order to process and make sense of
the information. In order to ensure, though, that theyre learning what should be
learned, you need to check for understanding. This is a formative test. Constantly
checking for understanding provides students with model of good study skills.
Examine student responses to figure out what they are learning and what they still
need to learn.

If They Understand, So What?

Learning with understanding, therefore is not the end goal of teaching, but it
is what we want students to do with their learning. This is what we want we call

transfer- the use of understanding in real-world contexts. It is the transfer of

learning that makes understanding enduring, and it is use of ones understanding in
life situation that gives ones learning deep meaning.