Kristina Doubet is a professor in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and Mathematics Education at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she has received the Distinguished Teacher Award, the Madison Scholar Award, and both the Sarah Miller Luck and Mengebier Endowed Professorships for Excellence in Education. Her research interests include standards-based grading, flexible grouping, interdisciplinary project-based learning, and innovative models of professional learning, particularly regarding differentiation at the middle and high school levels.

Doubet spent 10 years as a teacher and over 20 years as an instructional coach and curriculum developer. As a coach, Doubet has partnered with over 100 schools, districts, and organizations around initiatives related to differentiated instruction, the Understanding by Design® framework, classroom assessment, digital learning, and classroom management and grouping. In addition to numerous journal articles, book chapters, and professional digital pieces, she has published five books including The Flexibly Grouped Classroom: How to Organize Learning for Equity and Growth and Designing Authentic Performance Tasks and Projects: Tools for Meaningful Learning and Assessment, of which she is coauthor, along with Jay McTighe and Eric M. Carbaugh. Her other books offer practical strategies for differentiating instruction.

UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN® and UbD® are registered trademarks of Backward Design, LLC used under license.

Jessica Hockett has been a full-time education consultant for 12 years, specializing in interactive and differentiated instruction, standards-aligned curriculum, performance task design, classroom grouping practices, and program evaluation. Her work with numerous schools, districts, departments, and organizations has supported a wide range of initiatives centered on improving teacher and student learning.

Hockett teaches graduate courses in the University of Virginia Curry School of Education Online Masters programs. She is the coauthor, with Kristina Doubet, of Differentiation in Middle and High School: Strategies to Engage All Learners and, with Chester E. Finn Jr., of Exam Schools: Inside America's Most Selective Public High Schools (Princeton University Press, 2012), a big-picture look at a high-performing but understudied niche of U.S. education.