ABSTRACT
A graduate class of teachers struggles to design curriculum around “Big Ideas.” The aim of this study is to detail their efforts, along with the instructor’s prompts to “uncover” key concepts that already underlie their plans. They create brief demonstrations for each other, to practice this strategy. The teachers write about and discuss their attempts to keep revising such plans to illustrate their own students’ “enduring understandings,” in order for the latter to transfer knowledge across disciplinary lines. The graduate class addresses some of the difficulties with this process in the face of prepackaged curricula, and the prospect of administrative priorities for covering material on standardized tests.
