The Six Facets of Understanding

Understanding by Design

A Multi-Faceted ViewA Multi-Faceted View of Understanding of Understanding

• Facet 1: ExplanationFacet 1: Explanation

• Facet 2: InterpretationFacet 2: Interpretation

• Facet 3: ApplicationFacet 3: Application

• Facet 4: PerspectiveFacet 4: Perspective

• Facet 5: EmpathyFacet 5: Empathy

• Facet 6: Self-KnowledgeFacet 6: Self-Knowledge

Facet 1: Explanation

• Sophisticated and apt theories and illustrations, which provide knowledgeable and justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas

• Knowledge of why and how– Not mere knowledge of facts but inferences

about why and how, with specific evidence and logic-insightful connections and illustrations.

The why and how

• This is to see something in relationship to other things

• To know how something operates or functions– What are the consequences?– What other causes?– What are the connections?

Supporting opinions

• Explanations mean that students can demonstrate their understanding through the following verbs:– Support– Justify– Generalize– Predict– Verify– Prove– Substantiate

Facet 2:Interpretation

• Narratives, translations, metaphors, images that provide meaning– What does it mean?– Why does it matter?– What does it illustrate or illuminate in human

experience?– What “sense” does it make?

Narratives

• Narratives-the meanings and patterns we ascribe to all events, data, or experiences transform our understanding and perception of particular facts.

• The student possessing misunderstanding can show and events significance, reveal the data’s importance, or provide an interpretation that strikes a chord recognition.

Characteristics of interpretation

• All interpretations are bound by the personal, social, cultural, and historical context in which they arise.

• When interpreting, students move between the facts in their own experience to find legitimate but varying interpretations

• Students must have activities that ask them to interpret inherently ambiguous matters-different from typical “right answer” testing.

Facet 3: Application

• Application is the ability to use knowledge effectively in new situations and diverse contexts.

• How and where can we apply this knowledge, skill, process?

• How can my thinking and action be modified to meet the demands of this particular situation?

Real-world problems

• The problems that we develop for students should be as close as possible to the situation in which a scholar, artist, engineer, or other professional confronts such problems.

• According to Howard Gardner, “The test of understanding involves neither repetition of information learned nor performance of practice mastered. Rather it involves the appropriate application of concepts and principles to questions or problems that are newly posed.”

Facet 4: Perspective

• Perspective demands critical and insightful points of view

• From whose point of view?• What is assumed or at a tacit level that

needs to be made explicit?• Is there adequate evidence?• Is the evidence reasonable?• What are the strengths and weaknesses of

the idea?• What is a novel way to look at this?

Opportunities to confront new ideas

• Student should be exposed to alternative theories and diverse points of view regarding the “big ideas.”

• Critical analysis-perspective means developing the ability to critically analyze the various points of views found in text and in discussions.

Facet 5: Empathy

• Empathy is the ability to get inside another person’s feelings and worldviews.

• How does it seem to you?• What do they see that I don’t?• What do I need to experience a time to

understand?

Assumptions

• Intellectual empathy is essential if we are to make sense of ideas that we might quickly reject because of our own assumptions.

• Students need to learn how to open-mindedly embrace ideas, experiences, and text that might seem strange, are difficult to understand.

• They need to see how unusual ideas can be rich once they overcome their habitual assumptions.

Facet 6: Self-knowledge

• Self-knowledge is the wisdom to know one’s ignorance and how one’s patterns of thought and action inform as well as prejudice understanding.

• How does who I am shaped my views?• What are the limits of my understanding?• What are my blind spots?• What am I prone to misunderstand

because of prejudice, habit, and style?• How do I learn best?

Metacognition

• Metacognition refers to self-knowledge about how we think and why, and the relation between our preferred methods of learning in our understanding (or lack of it).

• The immature mind is thus not merely ignorant or unskilled, but unreflective.

Intellectual rationalization

• Too easily, we keep verifying our favored unexamined models, theories, analogies, and beliefs.

• Thinking in “either-or” terms is what Dewey viewed as the curse of immature thought.

• Self-knowledge is the key facet of understanding because the demands that we self-consciously question are ways of seeing the world if we are to develop further understanding-better able to see beyond ourselves.