Blog Task #2 – taxonomy of learning in knowledge networks

When I clicked through to the link of Bloom’s Taxonomy suddenly puzzle pieces of information came back to me of an undergraduate degree in education. Krathwohl described Blooms as a means to classify learning objectives, activities and assessments in a clear and concise manner (Krathwohl, 2002). As a teacher you always want the best for your students and a way of achieving that was always trying to reach those levels of higher order thinking. Does this still exist in a schooling system of digital natives? What needs to be updated in 2018 to provide a more non-linear system of stepping stones towards higher order thinking?

Iowa State University has developed website dedicated to the unpacking of Bloom’s taxonomy with interactive graphics and in depth articles. See Image Below. As I clicked my way through while expanding my reading I came across a statement that read, “representation of the knowledge dimension as a number of discrete steps can be a bit misleading” (IOWA State University, 2018). Something about this statement stuck with me because in a changing world and the rapid expansion of technology daily, how can we have a linear step process to the way in which students should be encouraged to think and learn? 

I pondered as I continue and thought about a student within my classroom. As an example imagine a student really loves sharks and decides they are going to create an interactive book using book creator. The student would like the book to have videos, questions and information. It will be a text that informs the reader. My learning objective is set for the class based on Bloom’s to reach the create step and students will type the information into their book creator book as part of the english program. The student however only knows how to list information. Does this mean they are only simply remembering? So with the help of technology we embed a video that is in child friendly language that the student understands but can’t yet articulate using their own words. Straight away a student who can only remember information to list is also creating. Both part of Bloom’s Taxonomy at vastly different ends of the scale. Huitt discussed this towards the end of his article stating students can “know” about a topic on “many different ways and different levels” (Huitt, 2011). Is this enough to say that students access information in different ways? Or should we be thinking of different ways to integrate higher order thinking into our classrooms?

I found this video as I went in search of something more relevant for students today (Mostafa, 2016). I thought it was a good representation of taxonomies applied to a different situation. How can we as educators make learning taxonomies more relevant to today’s learners? Are they still relevant? The questions that could be asked are endless and as students learning becomes less linear students need to be able to achieve higher order thinking at any given time.

I feel this blog post left me with more questions than answers as I delved down the rabbit hole to try and form so understanding of how learning taxonomoies can be applied into a changing classroom dynamic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how they can fit as a missing puzzle piece.

References

Huitt, W. (2011). Bloom et al.’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved [date], from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.html

Iowa State University. (2018) Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. Retrieved from http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/effective-teaching-practices/revised-blooms-taxonomy

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory into Practice, 41(4), 212-218. doi:10.1207/s15430421tip4104_2

Mostafa, J. (2016, January 3) Blooms Taxonomy: Inside Out [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40ANGIDGcw