Teaching and Learning for Understanding

The future for which we are preparing our students is filled with challenges and complexity: What kind of learning experiences will prepare them to meet those challenges thoughtfully and effectively?

Teaching for Understanding is an approach to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment that goes beyond the simple acquisition of information to help students develop transferable knowledge and skills that they can apply in situations and contexts they have never encountered before. This powerful framework, developed through collaborative research with practitioners, offers a guide for answering the key questions we all ask as we plan lessons and units of instruction:

• What is most important for my students to understand?
• What kinds of learning experiences will best help them develop and use that understanding flexibly and thoughtfully?
• will I (and my students) know how well and how much they have understood?

Used around the world and across grade levels and subject areas for nearly 30 years, the Teaching for Understanding framework offers a time-tested way to insure learners consistently engage in active, thought-demanding [or “thinking rich”?] classroom experiences that generate deep, lasting, and useful learning.

In this course, you will:

• explore the differences between “knowing” and “understanding”
• learn the components of the Teaching for Understanding framework and how to adapt and apply them effectively in your own work as an educator
• consider the challenges and obstacles to teaching and learning for understanding and how to respond to them
• develop (or revise) a curriculum unit, project, or learning activity that will support your students in developing meaningful and lasting understanding, generating learning that is truly life-worthy!

What past participants are saying:

“I used to think that my students just understood what I was teaching because I worked so hard to create engaging and meaningful lessons and be a good teacher. Now I think there is more to understanding than being able to get a good grade on the assessment. I realize how important it is for the teacher to create clear goals for understanding that are shared with students so they develop an understanding of how to apply the knowledge and skills when needed in life.”

“I used to think that asking all teachers to plan in the exact same way limited their effectiveness in the classroom. Now I wonder if it isn't the standardization that's the problem but what you're choosing to standardize. Approaches to teaching like what we've learned in the TfU course seem like they'd be universally useful as a framework for designing units and courses that truly foster understanding while still leaving things open enough for each teacher to retain pedagogical individuality.”

“I used to think that as a teacher it was my job to control the class and the learning that takes place. However, I now think it is imperative that students have a say in their learning and what interests and motivates them. I also used to think that assessments are totally teacher-created and for my use, but now I see that it is so important to have students not only assess themselves but their peers as well. Learning to self-assess and provide feedback to their peers allows students to take ownership of their learning while assisting their peers and deepening understanding.”

Course Designer

Course Instructors

María Ximena Barrera has been working with Project Zero ideas for the last 20 years, especially in project development to improve teaching and learning processes with educators in Latin America and Spain. She has participated in several educational seminars offering workshops and talks focused on Teaching for Understanding, Multiple Intelligences, and the use of protocols and Thinking Routines. For four years she worked throughout Colombia with teachers from the public sector on a project called Teaching for Understanding for the Construction of Citizenship. Since 2001 she has worked with WIDE World as an instructor for the different courses taught in Spanish (Teaching for Understanding and Leading for Understanding). Currently María Ximena is involved in the field of early childhood, first by implementing the Visible Thinking strategies at the Rethink and ReUse Center in Miami, she is also an Adjunct Professor at Florida International University. She is an active member of FUNDACIES and Vision Action, non-profit organizations dedicated to educational research and professional development for educators where she is the Director of Program Development. She holds a Master’s degree in education and curriculum design from Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia.

Patricia León Agustí has been a close collaborator with PZ since 1996. For 11 years she was Director of the Rochester School in Bogotá, Colombia, and founded the Colegio San Francisco de Asís, a PreK-12 school for poor children. The two schools, opposite in their economic circumstances, each benefitted from her work with PZ as she developed each school’s curriculum based on the Teaching for Understanding Framework. During 1998–1999 she was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Patricia worked with WIDE World Spanish online courses since the beginning as a coach and as instructor and also worked in schools offering professional development to teachers in different Latin American countries and in Spain. She led a reform movement in Colombia centered on Teaching for Understanding and for four years worked throughout Colombia with teachers from the public sector on a project called Teaching for Understanding for the Construction of Citizenship. She is the Executive Director of FUNDACIES and Vision Action, non-profit organizations dedicated to educational research and professional development for educators. She holds a Master’s degree in educational research and human development from CINDE and the Universidad Pedagógica, in Bogotá.

Online Course Schedule

All registered participants will receive email invitations to access the course site 4-5 days prior to the course start date. If you joined the course as an individual and not a member of an already-formed team, you will be placed on a virtual team and sent a separate email introducing you to your virtual team members 4-5 days prior to the course start date.

All sessions open on Mondays and close on Sundays. Much of the work is asynchronous and there are no course “times,” other than the once-per-session team meetings; participants decide when to work on the course material, and when to schedule their team meetings, based on the assignment due dates that occur toward the end of each week.

Please review the course schedule to ensure that you and your team will be able to participate fully in the course, taking into account your local holidays and vacations. Teams can plan ahead for scheduled holidays and vacations and need to coordinate those plans with their coach.

February 2025 Term Schedule

• Session 1 (Orientation): Opens Monday, February 16
• Session 2: Opens Monday, February 23
• Session 3: Opens Monday, March 9
• Session 4: Opens Monday, March 23
• Session 5: Opens Monday, April 6
• Session 6: Opens Monday, April 20
• Session 7: Opens Monday, May 4
• Course closes: Sunday, May 17

Required Course Textbook

The following textbook is required for participants in this course and is not included in the course tuition. The textbook is available for purchase on Amazon or through the publisher Wiley — in both paper and digital format.

• Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World by David N. Perkins (Jossey-Bass, 2014)

Tuition, Discounts, and Scholarships

Tuition

• For In-Depth Courses (6 sessions, 13 weeks), tuition is
  • $655 for educators joining as part of a team (3-6 members from the same organization)
    $685 for educators joining as part of a team of 2 (from the same organization) who will be placed on a virtual team with other teams of 2 (as attendance allows)
    $699 for educators joining as individuals to be placed on a virtual team
     

Tuition note: Teams consist of 3-6 educators. Two educators from the same school/organization wishing to learn together should register as individuals and email pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu to request placement on the same team.

Scholarships

PZ professional learning scholarships cover 50-70% of a course’s tuition for eligible educators. Scholarship applications must be submitted and accepted prior to registration; if you would like to apply for a scholarship, please do NOT register for the online course until you have been approved for a scholarship. Please note: Scholarships are limited and awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

To review scholarship criteria and apply for a scholarship, please use the In-Depth Course Scholarship Application link.

Confirmation and Payment

Registration confirmations are sent automatically from the registration software. Please keep these emails as they include your receipt of payment for documentation as well as your confirmation number should you need to access your registration in the future.

Payments are accepted via credit card or invoice for payment by check or wire transfer. Confirmation of registration does not confirm full payment if participants selected to pay other than by a credit card. All required paperwork and payments must be completed (or evidence provided of payments in process) by the registration deadline. For participants whose required paperwork and/or payments are not finalized at the registration deadline, they will be removed from the course roster and placed on a wait list.

Deadline for Registration

For the in-depth courses starting February 2026, the deadline for registration is February 6, 2026 at 11:59pm Boston Time.

Please note: Space is limited. The courses may fill prior to the registration deadline.

Refund Request and Participant Substitution Deadlines

Requests for refunds and participant substitutions for the in-depth course for the February 2026 term must be submitted by February 6, 2026, 11:59 Boston Time.

To request a refund, submit a participant substitution, or to ask questions, please email pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu.