To me, knowing is the little sister to understanding. To know something means that you have awareness of the subject, perhaps even that you can teach the subject to someone else. But to understand means that you can take knowing to the next level and actually apply the subject to other aspects of your life. It centers around the question I hear so often from my tutoring students when I'm teaching (math in particular) "why do I need to know this?" I tell students, you need to know division/percentages/percentage change/etc. so that when you're at a store you can figure out what 20% off means (for example). So often though students can learn how to do something, but still not understand what the real-life application of that knowledge is and to me, that's the central difference between knowing and understanding - being able to take knowledge and apply it to something else that is not so obvious. A good example of knowledge versus understanding referenced in Understanding by Designwas the teacher's efforts to get his students to not just learn what good foods were, but to apply this knowledge to creating their own diets. By doing so, the students show an understanding of nutritional value that affects their daily lives.
As teachers, this quote from Understanding by Designresonated with me in terms of identifying the difference between knowledge and understanding was that "we must grasp the key idea that we are coaches of their ability to play the "game" of performing with understanding, not tellers of our understanding to them on the sidelines (Wiggins and McTighe, 17). I think it is definitely possible, if not even common, for teachers themselves to forget the difference between knowing and understanding and I wonder if sometimes teachers themselves don't necessarily understand the subject that they are trying to teach to their students. I think this is how the design templates referenced in chapter one of Understanding by Design can be useful - to help teachers organize their own understanding of a subject before they design a lesson plan to teach their students.
