Discerning Cognitive Skill Levels
In some circles, assigning cognitive levels to learning seems to help. I, for one, believe in responding to the individual wholly. This is neither cryptic nor is it something that cannot be replicated. That said, while working in a system, it is important that we mean the same thing when we discuss educational objectives. One such taxonomy of educational objectives is the one prepared by a team of people led by Benjamin Bloom which resulted in the publication of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1.
Firstly, most people I have met haven’t read it although they might claim to adhere to it or be an authority on it. I hadn’t read it till I read the critique of it (which I did after I felt I had understood it). Suffice it to say that it was the thinking of a team of people who were largely academics &, like most academics, like clean compartments & sequences. A commendable effort which I hope doesn’t distract the educator from the unfolding of learning.
I see 2 challenges that teachers face with this taxonomy — (a) how do I gain inspiration from it (expansive)? (b) how do I fit my teaching into this (tactical)?
In this post I am going to restrict myself to the latter. The most common form of manifestation of this challenge is — “Here is my question. Now, what level of Bloom’s (sic) is it?” While I will not debate that the right way to proceed is to ensure a deep understanding of the original motivation & intended purpose followed by the levels & their connotation followed by an appreciation of transitions between levels (rarely seen this done) followed by a study of the critique of the taxonomy followed by a study of alternate taxonomies (including the revised Bloom’s taxonomy & Marzano & Kendall’s “New” taxonomy) followed by a comparison of each before applying it to one’s teaching, there is the matter of scale & efficacy. The stated procedure is perhaps excellent for a pedagogy researcher & academic but might not work for an on-the-ground teacher. Hence, the tactical challenges are worth my attention as I focus on equipping my team with the necessary know-how. The teachers in my school find grappling with the Bloom’s Taxonomy a bit of an unpleasant task. I want to get my team on board so that we are all steadily moving towards a better ecosystem in terms of quality.
I prepared a version of the infographic below with verbs/word-stems in it but then I decided against posting it here. My rationale behind my preference is simply this — a bunch of words are distracting & tend to push the teacher into naive pattern matching (“See!? There is a ‘compare’ in my question & hence, it is an Analyse level question”). Surely the experienced teacher wouldn’t do this & can find many word/verb lists online including this, this & this. I am merely catering to those who want a systematic way of resolving the question “Does this belong to this, or this?”. Here is what I prescribe:
- Pick your question
- Identify the verb. Visualise what you are expecting the student to perform.
- Outline your ideal response.
- Once you have it, answer the questions in the infographic, from top to bottom. If at any stage you feel “Yes, that is all I had outlined in my ideal response” then you have found the level of cognitive skills (or, as Bloom intended, educational objective) that matches the assessment objective of the question.
Yes, this does lend itself to a flowchart & that is what I first created. I was happy with it, but thought the following infographic would perhaps be less intimidating. So I created one with the verbs, before creating another one (below) without verbs but more indicative of what the student might be performing at each level.
One flaw I can imagine being identified in the graphic below is the assumption that a question at an “Analyse” level will definitely have a “Remember” level component AND an “Understand” level component AND an “Apply” level component. In other words, I cannot jump into analyses without remembering & understanding something as well as applying pertinent prior knowledge. I am yet to come across an assessment tool that hopes to identify the student’s Analysis skills but doesn’t require an understanding or application of prior knowledge. So be it with further levels.
The hope is that with this handy tool, the teacher is also nudged into reflecting on what it would take to get the student comfortable with tackling questions at various levels. Simply exposing them to questions at different levels & asking them again is merely an act of checking their skill of “Remember”ing. I am indebted to all the sources & freely available content online that served as reference. I cannot claim 100% authenticity in what I have created but I can certainly claim that I haven’t come across such a structured approach to reverse engineering a question’s fit.
I am keen to learn if I have misunderstood something or have used phrases & terminology incorrectly. Please do share thoughts, comments, feedback & corrections (along with references so I may learn more) to this post.
