Well, this is going to be a post in English, since my guess is that there is a growing interest in restructuring, reshifting or rethinking education in general than just in The Netherlands. The monthly lectures of ECHA EU I attended in the past year showed the continued search for best practices and initiatives concerning talent development among youngsters. In the last six weeks several LinkedIn members mentioned Bloom’s Taxonomy in connection to this search. So to that pond I will add my pebble.
Inhoudsopgave
- What was mentioned about Bloom’s Taxonomy?
- Some historical background on taxonomy1
- Behaviourism or just observation?
- An important revision on cognitive domain taxonomy
- Using taxonomy as feedback tool
- Using categories in learning to learn
- References4
What was mentioned about Bloom’s Taxonomy?
The posts contained a similar and yet very different approach to the Taxonomy of Bloom. Their content and the comments made be other LinkedIn members triggered me to write a post on my new – still in development – website and place a link to this post on my LinkedIn account.
The first post I encountered mentioning the Taxonomy was written by Dominique Sluijsman, who presently holds a position as lector curriculum development at Rotterdam College for Applied Sciences. Her post describes some of the characteristics of the original taxonomy, but mixes in some remarks on theories about learning and thinking.
The second post was written by Xandra van Hooff, who has a very different approach to education as verwonderwijzer. She just mentioned Bloom without elaborating on it other than mentioning his work still dominates the way our educational system tends to be organised.
Some historical background on taxonomy1
According to the Foreword in the first book Bloom and collegues published, was a multiyear itterative project involving hundreds of participants, mainly from universities and colleges throughout the United States. The project originated in an informal meeting of college examiners at the American Psycological Assiociation Convention of 1948 in Boston . The importance of this group effort is acknowledged on the title page of this first book, where it states By A Committee of College and University Examiners prior to listing the editor and cowriters.
As a result of these meetings and evaluations Benjamin Bloom, David Krathwohl and collegues published two handbooks describing a taxonomy of observable objective criteria to evaluate the progress of students using tests. The first (hand)book covers the cognitive domain , whereas the second (hand)book focusses on the affective domain . The third (hand)book on the phychomotor domain has never been published, although that domain is mentioned in both other books (see for example ).
Unfortunately the APA 7th citation style – which I am using on this site as well – no longer prints the title and subtitle of a series to which books belong. One can add it to the bibliographical fields of the citation, but that information won’t be shown. In this case both books are part of a series, titled: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The Classification of Educational Goals. This series title immediately makes clear, that the taxonomy is in no way related to learning, thinking or instructional design. It solely provides a tool that enables examiners to assess achievements in a more uniform way. And surely it will also enable researchers to better monitor the outcome of their interventions regarding learning, thinking or instructional design.
Behaviourism or just observation?
When you make a test or exam, you anwer the questions to your best knowledge, right? Strictly speaking your actions are defined by classic behaviourism. The question or action asked (the stimulus) triggers an answer or reaction form you (the respons). It doesn’t matter whether you adhere to some learning theory or other: this statement is a fundamental truth. It is the only way in which you as educator or trainer can asses the extent or better the effect of your instructions, training, teaching on your students. In other words by creating a test you can observe what the student does know and what still should be developped.
This is where I disagree with Dominique in her LinkedIn post as she associates the taxonomy of educational objectives with the cognitive processes occuring in a student’s mind (second paragraph). Although I agree with her statements about the pyramid form and the way the taxonomy is (mis)used in creating assessments. The last few sentences in the second paragraph actually emphasize the motivation of Bloom et al. to start working on a taxonomy rather then a classification .
In her blog about Bloom’s Taxomony Stella Kompa argued that the taxomony was meant to oppose the then dominant instructional approach to learning2:
Formulated by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues in the mid-50s (Bloom et al., 1956), the taxonomy attempted to break away from behaviorist theories as well as learning via remembering (rote learning) by promoting higher-order thinking skills, such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating concepts.
Well, that is not what the introduction and first chapters in both books mention. Althought it is true, that behaviourism as promoted by Skinner wasn’t interested in any mental processes at all. Both books use the word behaviour quite a lot, because it is the only outcome that can be observed in studying humanities. Human behaviour is after all the subject of sciences like sociology, anthropology, (social) psychology and educactional sciences.
An important revision on cognitive domain taxonomy
In 2001 Krathwohl and others published a book called A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing in which a revision of the original cognitive domain taxonomy was presented. An overview of this revision was given shortly thereafter in 2002 . Two important modifications immediately stood out:
- Instead of using nouns to classify items in the taxonomical categories (leading to dualisn in knowledge category) verbs were used. That also lead to the inversion of the two highest categories in the taxonomy.
- The knowledge category no longer was part of a taxonomical order, but became a separate dimension of the cognitive domain taxonomy. As a consequence the original taxonomical categories were placed in a cognitive process dimension.
Presenting the cognitive domain taxonomy as a two dimensional framework was seen as a major step forward from the first conception to create a framework that categorizes educational outcomes. Although three categeories of knowledge were already present in the orginal taxonomy, the addition of the fourth category – metacognitive knowledge – made a difference. As Pintrich explained in his comment on Krathwolh’s article in the same journal and to the published book, metacognitive knowledge encompasses both student awareness on knowledge and learning as well as options to study this awareness . Hence, the knowledge dimension bridges the gap between the taxonomy of eductional goals and research on learning and personal beliefs (among others).
Using taxonomy as feedback tool
So evaluating test results provides you as educator the tools to have a meaningful feedback interview with your students and adapt your didactics on the subject to their needs. To illustrate the importance of that feedback evaluation and change in didactics I cite the answer I gave to a chemistry teacher at a job interview in a high school in Amsterdam. She asked me why I disliked a class-year system, where protocol (PTA) was leading.
A student recieves a 5.5 (half mark) for an intermediate test, wich is considered as sufficient for that test. But the student also showed roughly half of the subject tested was insufficiently understood. Yet you continue your teaching as if that student had recieved a 10 (full mark). And then you are surprised that that student fails the final exams …
MHM Cornelussen (mei 2022)
That quote incited an interesting discussion about pedagogy and didactics within the instructional design of my approach to teaching. In that discussion I emphasized the role of the teacher as coach: not stating the fact, but finding out where that fact originated from. So not using the cognitive taxonomy, but the affective taxonomy (and other ideas on feedback) instead. In a recent paper Nelson et al. pleaded for such an approach to enhance talent development.
Using categories in learning to learn
At some point in my teacher carreer an hype to classify test questions in certain categories stormed the Dutch educational system. That hype coincided with revision of the curriculum of the exact sciences that came into effect in 20143. The best known variants of those classification systems are RTTI (published in November 2012) and OBIT (published in March 2013). These two systems are essentially scaled down versions of the (revised) taxonomy on cognitive domain categories. Generally speaking the first two letters refer to lower order thinking skills, whereas the last two letters can be attributed to higher order thinking skills.
Although it forces six categories into each of the three taxonomical domains envisioned by Bloom and Krathwolh the (advanced organiser) this paper from an Indian college provides a useful summary of the discusions and uses of the taxonomy of educational goals . For some readers translating the domain triad cognitive – affective – psychomotor via knowing – feeling – doing into head – heart – hand will be a strong reminder to the writings of Rudolf Steiner. Sometimes it proves more effective to let students experiment with a subject instead of teaching that subject. Explaining the experiment directly calls upon their experience performing it.
That approach can also be used when discussing the results of a test. In general I did not only gave the correct answers to the questions in that test, I also explained why that was the answer to it. Thus strengthening the already acquired knowledge for all students. But as I also had labeled the questions into OB and IT categories, I could also coach my students on a better understanding of the subject at hand. It helped them to discover unknown hiates in their understanding and guided them from performance learning to mastery learning.
In that transition from rote-learning to performance and then mastery learning I found the scheme of Vermunt and Donche very helpful . Showing students this scheme made them aware of the complexity of learning and how the knowledge dimension of the cognitive domain taxonomy could be used to become more confident in their studying.
References4
- The Second World War had just ended and the world was still reeling from its impact in 1948. The United States went from WW 2 to the Korean War to the Vietnam War. The controversy between the Western Hemisphere and the Russian-Chinese Hemisphere was becoming more and more prominent. Colonies were claiming independence from their mainly Western nations, including the United States. These external factors have an impact on how educational goals are defined. ↩︎
- There are more examples in Kompa’s blog to which I disagree or can critisize. One example is section 2.2, where she mentions the lack of an epistomological base. Even though the general context is true, the way she writes about suggests she did not read (or understand) the introductionary chapters of the first book. ↩︎
- Also in 2014 schools were required by law to become more inclusive towards students with special needs. That meant a different approach to pedagogical and didactical habits of teachers, mentors and school leaders in the school system. ↩︎
- Unfortunately the sorting of references in the list and the use of uppercase in the titles is not according to what it should be in APA-style ↩︎