The Origins of Bloom's Taxonomy

Taken From: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/bloom.html

"Beginning in 1948, a group of educators undertook the task of classifying education goals and objectives. The intent was to develop a classification system for three domains: the cognitive, the affective, and the psychomotor. Work on the cognitive domain was completed in 1956 and is commonly referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956). Others have developed taxonomies for the affective and psychomotor domains.
The major idea of the taxonomy is that what educators want students to know (encompassed in statements of educational objectives) can be arranged in a hierarchy from less to more complex. The taxonomy is presented below with sample verbs and a sample behavior statement for each level. "

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy can be summarised thus: (basic through to inspired)

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

One good site that summarises the features of Bloom's taxonomy: http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloom.html

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy can be summarised thus: (basic through to inspired)

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

One good site that summarises the features of Bloom's taxonomy: http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloom.html

Deep Learning in the Digital Age

One article I have found considers electronic portfolios as an information technology that can promote deep learning, http://electronicportfolios.org/digistory/epstory.html

The article considers the features of deep learning as identified by Moon (1999)
and involving:

• Noticing
• Making sense
• Making meaning
• Working with meaning
• Transformative learning

As it relates to digital storytelling, which (presumably) uses self-reflexive and critical levels of reflection in the way of:

• Story finding
• Story telling
• Story expanding
• Story processing
• Story reconstructing
  

Facilitating Deep Learning in Adults

Today the lecturer suggested that computer technologies generally encourage surface learning reather than deep learning experiences. He has asked us to research the concept of deep learning as it appears on the internet and link the concept to computer technologies. The underlying question is: How can we facilitate deep learning in adults and using information technologies?

Researching the matter on the Internet, I found the adjacent concept map.


Another site that examines the conditions for promoting deep learning can be found here: http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9610/disc_learn.htm
On this site, Professor Al McLeod writes:

"Based on the systematic feedback of approximately 9,000 students during my career as a college professor, I've noted some of the core factors that promote deep learning. Other factors could be cited, but these seem basic. Perhaps the central idea above is that any factor that promotes the fight/flight reaction—and related feelings of stress, unfair and unfriendly competition, or anxiety—inhibits positive DLS through the production of stress hormones as mediated in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis. Conversely, any social action that promotes safety, security, caring and similar affective states, facilitates positive DLS through the release of positive hormones."

It appears that classroom situations that promote feeling of safety amongst and for the students, work best in facilitating possibilities for deep learning.

10. Transformation of School or Greater Community

The final element of a learning classroom involves the transformation of the school or greater community. Within a learning environment, a given classroom will necessarily impact the structure and atmostphere of the school and at times, the wider community.

9. Transformation

The ninth element of the learning classroom is a notion of transformation. Within a constructivist framework, student transformation is inevitable. Within a safe learning environment and upon the ongoing exploration of ideas, individuals will naturally mature as critical and reflective thinkers and citizens.

The above scene is taken from Mike Newell's 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile, a story that charts the individual transformations of a group of high achieving, 'strategic learning' art students when challenged by the radical thinking style of a new art teacher.

8. Creativity

The eighth requirement for a learning classroom is the element of creativity through innovation and design.

One thought experiment I examine with my Year Seven Critical reasoning class involves the limits and shape of the imagination. In Part One of the experiment, I ask the students to imagine a monster. Exploring the results, we examine the notion that each monster tends to be a composite of frightening ideas, for example multiple eyes/appendages, slimy scales etc.
Identifying those students having particular creative flair, I ask the students to each imagine a colour they have never seen before. The impossibility of the proposition indicates that the imagination is brought to bear via the faculties of our senses ie. we cannot imagine what we have not in some way experienced.

While many students are disheartened at losing the supposed omnipotence of the imagination, the thought experiment does appear to show the true shape of creativity as innovation and design. It would also appear that creativity is indispensible to a constructivist education approach. The 'horror movie' sketch also shows the powers of critique capable via the imagination.

7. Power and Freedom

The seventh element required of a learning classroom is a sense of learner empowerment and freedom. I believe that in a learning classroom:
1. Individuals should be able to explore and interpret ideas without fear of upsetting the status quo.
2. Challenging one's own and everyone else's opinion is exciting.
3. Learners may come to appreciate assessments as opportunities for demonstrating their own understanding, rather than fearful experiences that bite at their self-esteem. No-one is ever their mark.
4. Individuals may come to understand learning as a life-long hobby or occupation and in this way, the teacher and everyone else is still learning.

The above picture exemplifies the American Civil Rights Movements as it impacted the classroom.

6. Diversity and Difference

The sixth element required for a learning classroom is a notion that the differences between people must be treated as gifts. In a learning classroom, eneryone should be able to contribute their talents, whether they be in art or argument. As a student and teacher of philosphy, I believe that groups and related discussion of all sorts thrive via diversity.

5. Opportunities for Deep Learning

A learning classroom would also stimulate opportunities for deep learning.
One article I found compared the attributes of deepand surface learning thus:

"Deep and Surface are two approaches to study, derived from original empirical research by Marton and Säljö (1976) and since elaborated by Ramsden (1992), Biggs (1987, 1993) and Entwistle (1981), among others.
It is important to clarify what they are not.
Although learners may be classified as “deep” or “surface”, they are not attributes of individuals: one person may use both approaches at different times, although she or he may have a preference for one or the other.
They correlate fairly closely with motivation: “deep” with intrinsic motivation and “surface” with extrinsic, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Either approach can be adopted by a person with either motivation.
There is a third form, known as the “Achieving” or strategic approach, which can be summarised as a very well-organised form of Surface approach, and in which the motivation is to get good marks. The exercise of learning is construed as a game, so that acquisition of technique improves performance. It works as well as the analogy: insofar as learning is not a game, it breaks down.

Deep Learning

1. Focus is on “what is signified”.
2. Relates previous knowledge to new knowledge.
3. Relates knowledge from different courses.
4. Relates theoretical ideas to everyday life.
5. Relates and distinguishes evidence and argument.
6. Organises and structures content into a coherant whole.
7. Emphasis is on the internal, from within the student.

Surface Learning

1. Focus is on the “signs” (or on the learning as a
signifier of something else)
2. Focus on unrelated parts of the task
3. Information for assessment is simply memorised
4. Facts and concepts are associated unrelfectively
5. Principles are not distinguished from examples
6. Task is treated as an external imposition
7. Emphasis is external, from demands of assessment

Taken From http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm

I found another amusing article that forms a manifesto of sorts on strategic learning (the 'well-organised' style of surface learning) :)
http://www.tabula-rasa.ssu.swin.edu.au/articles/bludgers.html

4. Opportunities for Reflection

The fourth element that the lecturer suggested fior a learning classroom is the provision for opportunities of reflection. He discussed three stages of reflection relevent to education; descriptive reflection, self-reflexive reflection and critical reflection.

Descriptive reflection : Students capable of reflecting descriptively are able to source and repeat bodies of information in a summary fashion.

Self-reflexive reflection: Students having a capacity for self-reflexive awareness are able to draw upon their own lived experience to aid them in exploring, evaluating and interpreting new bodies of information.

Critical reflection: Students with critical awareness are able to contrast and explore novel experiences or bodies of information via separate areas of their existing knowledge.

In a learning classroom, a constructivist education approach would presumably nurture learners' capacities for self-reflexive and critical reflection. Learning tasks would emphasise and stimulate the learner's capacities for self-flexive and critical reflection, rather than simply have students repeat vast swathes of 'information'.

3. A sense of Community

The third element required for a learning classroom the lecturer suggested is a sense of community. Upon reflection, I suggest that a sense of class community helps to establish both novelty and patience in undertaking processes of problem-solving and learning. Within a class community, learners may come to appreciate the input from others and recognise the joys in simply sorting through and exploring new ideas without need to immediately grasp at an 'answer'.

Mrs. Basch's and students' masterpieces taken from http://www.sof.edu/images/websites/collageart.jpg

2. A Constructivist Style of Education

The second element required for a learning classoom is a constructivist education perspective. As I understand it, Constructivism in education seeks to enable students to assemble new information from a number of sources and so 'construct' a system of understanding via repeated experimentation with novel concepts or ideas. Constructivism encourages learners to be more confident about processes of problem-solving and explorative rather than impatient. In Constructivism, the emphasis of education lies with inspiring and stimulating the students interest in learning, rather than simply having the student regurgitate a series of unintegrated curricula that lack ongoing meaning or relevance for a learner.

On one a site I found concerning constructivism in the classroom,
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/construct.html

I found the following:

"Bruner (see Kearsley, 1999) provides the following principles of constructivistic learning:
Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn (readiness).
Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the student (spiral organization).
Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given).
Advocates of a constructivistic approach suggest that educators first consider the knowledge and experiences students bring with them to the learning task. The school curriculum should then be built so that students can expand and develop this knowledge and experience by connecting them to new learning. Advocates of the behavioral approach, on the other hand, advocate first deciding what knowledge or skills students should acquire and then developing curriculum that will provide for their development."

Taken From: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/construct.html

1. A Sense of Pace

The first element need for a learning classroom is a sense of place.

'The Aboriginal notion of sacredness, far from disappearing, seems to be taking hold in contemporary Australia. A World Heritage-listed site, the Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park attracts half a million tourists a year. The traditional owners, the Anangu, work together with the Northern Territory Government and Ayers Rock Resort to provide visitors with an experience that is not just exciting, but spiritually moving. "Spiritual tourism" is proving to be an effective way of showing respect for indigenous culture while enabling visitors to reflect on their own sense of the sacred. '
Taken from www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s420104.htm

A Learning Classroom

I was asked to imagine a classroom I would design were I to have complete freedom of invention. In order to stimulate discussion, the lecturer identified ten elements required for a learning classroom:
1. A sense of place.
2. A Constructivist Education perspective.
3. A sense of Community.
4. Opportunity for Reflection on descriptive, self-reflexive and critical levels.
5. Opportunity for deep learning.
6. A sense of difference as gifts.
7. An actualising of power and freedom to pursue ideas.
8. A place for creativity.
9. Opportunities for transformation of the self.
10. Following opportunities for the transformation of the nature of the school.