Several years ago, while I was back in college, working to get my teaching degree (and license) the topic of Bloom’s Taxonomy came up in one of the classes I was impelled to take for my degree. The idea that critical thinking is a teachable skill, and that Bloom’s Taxonomy is a simple, and rough guideline in this endeavor was inspiring to me…that is, until I realized that this had very rarely been part of my education, and that it wasn’t an implicit part of my college classes either…sigh.
Since this realization I have seen some new additions on the labeling of the critical thinking front in education. There is now a newer ‘digital’ version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I can only wonder if there are fundamental changes in critical thinking with the advent of some new technology…
This ties-in with one of the darker aspects of my view of these topics…that very few teachers use them, because they don’t seem to ‘get’ them. From the experience I had in college, this is a pretty obvious conclusion… you see, even Bloom’s Taxonomy was taught as mere data to ingest for some test. Critical thinking methods weren’t used in helping these students start to gain some semblance of understanding what this can be, and how it can make a real difference in teaching students to think…better, deeper, more cogently, etc.
Don’t misunderstand what I am trying to cover here…I think that every version of any of these newer and better taxonomies and hierarchies of how to instill critical thinking has a lot of value… I worry about how many (or how few) teachers actually use this as a guideline in developing lessons and curricula…
I have learned from a few teachers over the years, most of them were quite obviously interested and enjoyed using these sorts of teaching methods (the ones which make student s think). I feel lucky to have had them, but I also wish I had more of them…
This brings me to consider whether learning how to think in a critical manner, to read critically, and to be able to speak (or any form of expression, for that matter) in a clear manner is as important as any of the curriculum standards in any of the K-12 classes…
I believe that an argument could easily be made, stating that critical thinking is the most important thing students can learn. Of course, which class would it be in? Where would we add this to some curriculum standard?
To go with these questions, I have a few links, which showcase some of the variants in hierarchies in the education world…regarding critical thinking…look at them critically!
Thinking Skills Resources
http://pypinquiryandconcepts.wikispaces.com/Thinking+Skills+Resources
A Simple Solution to a Complex Problem
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol5/523-wheeler.aspx
The DSRP method is intimately tied to knowledge. In more than 20 years of research completed at Cornell University, Cabrera examined thousands of disciplines, surveying their histories and interviewing experts in those fields. He also studied how novices and experts construct new knowledge or change existing knowledge. The result was four universal patterns that structure knowledge:
Making Distinctions between Identity and Other
Organizing Systems into Parts and Wholes
Recognizing Relationships of Cause and Effect
Taking Perspectives of Point and View
Rethinking the ‘Natives and Immigrants’ debate. Bloom’s Taxonomy for the digital learner.
When thinking about our learners and their learning environments almost all teachers will be familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy which classifies learning objectives into levels. The key question which arises is how Bloom’s Taxonomy remains relevant in such a fast changing learning environment where the very nature of the ‘learning’ is continually being reshaped. The presentation which Matt passed on to me looks at the response to this through the creation of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. This identifies the nature of the learning which can take place within our digital environments and classifies this into levels. Well worth 5 minutes of your time and really made me reflect all over again on how important collaboration is within our 21st Century learning environments.
Bloom’s
http://prezi.com/gb4mbz9vg7hg/blooms
Bloom’s Taxonomy
http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/?p=275
I recently found a couple of Web sites that use the taxonomy to provide guidance for writing clicker questions. The Technology Enhanced Learning and Research (TELR) center at the Ohio State University has a great site on teaching with clickers, one that includes advice for designing clicker questions using the 1956 taxonomy. Here’s their example of a “synthesis” question, one that asks students to “put parts together to form a new whole”:
If Homer wrote The Iliad today, Stanley Fish and Harold Bloom would argue, respectively, whether the work should be classified as:
- Existential vs. romantic
- Postmodern vs. classical
- Modern vs. romantic
- Postcolonial vs. modern
- Preliterate vs. postliterate
This question requires students to know something about The Iliad as well as Stanley Fish and Harold Bloom’s approaches to critical theory. I think this is a great example of a clicker question that calls for higher-level thinking, one that would work well in a literature course.
The e-Learning Center at Northern Arizona University has a similar set of advice for designing clicker questions. They apparently used the TELR page as a model and thus also used the 1956 taxonomy. Interestingly, their sample questions are all from the field of archaeology. (Now that I think about it, Mrs. Orchard included archaeology in my fourth-grade curriculum, too.) Here’s their example of a “synthesis” question:
We recently excavated a site in northeastern Arizona with a small 6 – 8 room roomblock, tusayan black-on-white pottery, and a small kiva. Nearby we found prehistoric rock alignments in association with large multi-use bifaces suggesting the area was used as an agricultural field. What kind of site is this?
- Pueblo II Anasazi
- Pueblo II Mogollon
- Basketmaker II
Answer: A. Pueblo II Anasazi. The Anasazi were the prehistoric archaeological culture that lived small roomblocks, made tusayan black-on-white pottery, and lived in northeastern Arizona.
This looks like a great question, but I might dispute its categorization as a “synthesis” question. Whereas the TELR example above clearly requires students to put ideas together, this question seems to require students to know the characteristics of three kinds of archaeological sites, which is more of a “comprehension” question as I see it.
dsrp.com
http://www.idsrp.com/index.html
