Why does it matter?
The question “My teachers give me assignments that help me to better understand the subject” — which students answer on a Likert scale — gives us insight into how meaningful students find their assignments. If students understand how their assignments are designed to help them, they are more likely to stay on task and lean into their learning.
Project Zero: Teaching for Understanding
Teaching for understanding means presenting students with thought-provoking strategies like asking them to explain their thinking, find evidence in examples, generalize, make analogies, and represent topics in a new way. How can we know that our teaching is focused on understanding? Tina Blythe and David Allen have created a checklist to help educators assess how well they are teaching for understanding.