Chapter 15: Understanding By Design As A Tool For Collaborative Planning

Given both the prevalence and importance of coteaching when working with English language learners (ELLs), how can institutions of higher education prepare English as a second language (ESL) teachers to master their roles as language development specialists in the context of collaborative content-area planning? If teacher educators are like classroom teachers, tending to work in isolation (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009; Lortie, 1975), are teacher candidates in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) programs adequately exposed to models of collaboration, tools for coplanning, or opportunities to work with content-area teacher candidates—all of which could foster their capacity to coplan and coteach when eventually in the field? This chapter describes one approach to curriculum design, Understanding by Design (UbD) (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), and how it was used as a tool to better prepare ESL teacher candidates for collaborative planning with content teachers.