VKP Glossary

	Click on the links below to explore the concepts:
	Active Learning Authentic Assessment Authentic Learning Cognitive Apprenticeship Constructivism Distributed Intelligence Inquiry-Based Learning Intermediate Cognitive Processes Learner Centered Novice and Expert Learners Peer Review Prior Knowledge Problem-Based Learning Scholarship of Teaching Uncoverage Understanding

Understanding

From: Cerbin, "Learning with and Teaching for Understanding"

Understanding…is not simply constructing an idea, but being able to use the idea in various ways (3).

…learning with understanding is a process in which a person tries to make sense out of new information by connecting it to prior knowledge and establishing relationships among ideas…(4).

A scaffold is any support or process that helps a person solve a problem or achieve a goal which would be beyond their unassisted efforts. Scaffolds do things like: 1) provoke students to notice gaps, inconsistencies, bugs in what they have learned, 2) engage students in taking stock of what they know and reconsider what they already know, and 3) involve students in structuring and restructuring knowledge. (6)

Toward the "no clue" end of the continuum we would say the person's understanding is incomplete, underdeveloped, naïve, inchoate, half-baked, incipient, superficial, or trivial. Toward the "deep understanding" end of the continuum we would say the person's understanding is rich, elaborate, profound, thorough, expert, or well developed. (7)

From: David Perkins (1998), "What is Understanding?" In Martha Stone Wiske (ed.), Teaching for Understanding.

In a phrase, understanding is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows. To put it another way, an understanding of a topic is a "flexible performance capability" with emphasis on the flexibility. In keeping with this, learning for understanding is like learning a flexible performance--more like learning to improvise jazz or hold a good conversation or rock climb than learning the multiplication table or the dates of the presidents...Learning facts can be a crucial backdrop to learning for understanding, but learning facts is not learning for understanding.