If you take Analysis as an example and firstly consider the artwork, of Piss Christ by Serrano Andes.You may Identify the materials it is made from , describe what it looks like, classify what style of art it is, make inference to its meaning, anticipate what others may think of it and appraise its value to a wider debate to society.
Problem Number 1- Is it a Hierarchy ?- To do one level of Blooms, you have actually used all levels of the Taxonomy.
Problem Number 2-Clarity - If you can easily cover all the levels from one other, how useful is it to your students? How clear is it how to analyse Is it usable? Would they use independently? Or is it one of those "secret teacher business" things? If so, how are we supposed to communicate with our students about this?
If you now Analyse the performance of FC Dinamo Bender last year. Then you may enumerate the statistics, compare home form against away, calculate the difference between home and away form, compare (yes again!) number of goals scored versus conceded, generalise the home form and away from form both these comparisons and decide how well they performed.Again, every level covered.
Problem Number 3- Ignoring of the content being learned.- The skills utilised in the analysis of art work and football statistics, is very different. One is more likely to be interpretive of opinion, while the other could be a number crunching exercise. I know I have been selective here, but I have tried to avoid using jarring juxtaposition. It is clear that the content helps determine what is involved in the analysis, Blooms taxonomy separates these. I want my students to learn something as well as think in complex ways about their world, this is why I am actively promoting the abstinence from Blooms and the championing of SOLO taxonomy.
More on SOLO taxonomy here - http://hooked-on-thinking.com/ and http://pedagogicalpurposes.blogspot.com/2010/08/video-introduction-to-solo-taxonomy.html
Blooms levels from http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm
Images from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ
and data from www.vitibet.com
I see you point Darren and am, as you know, sympathetic. But I have found ways to make Bloom's useful & clear to students: I call it the Grade Ladder. Here's how it works for GCSE English:
ReplyDeleteA* Evaluate (how a quote links to big picture; writers' intentions)
A Analyse (zoom in on language, make connections/links
B Explore (come up with different interpretations)
C Explain
D Identify
Does this make sense?
David, it would be great to see a blog on a dismantled piece of work! Although I'm suspecting SOLO may be better as it has a quantitative element to it, would you want just one connection, for example. Structurally your ladder has a SOLO feel to it.
ReplyDeleteDarren! I completely agree that people use Blooms in very silly ways. And I agree your approach of championing SOLO as a much more useful learning tool. But I think your reasons to lambast Blooms are tosh!
ReplyDelete1. So to remember something, you have to evaluate and create it? No.
2. Your assumption is wrong (see 1)
3. Maths at the higher level (i.e. Physics) is very opinionated and creative. As is statistics.
Come on! The positive power of hate is very useful if the thing you hate is bad. I'm sure you can find something worse to hate than Blooms!
Or have a go at the people that use Blooms stupidly, but not Blooms itself.
Let it go brother!
Gwyn,
ReplyDeleteIt's more of an irritation than a hatred. I'm just trying to point out it's problems, the biggest of which is the difficulty in getting students to use it, they never own it, probably for the reasons above. Blooms gas a great feature which is universally ignored, being the four knowledge dimensions of procedural, metacognitive, Factual and conceptual. These are a great foundation for any curriuculum.
I'm not saying to do one level you have to do all the others, but you can and it is this that makes it difficult for students to truly synthesise.( as if Gove would want that to happen anyway).
Blooms made the distinction that the to get to synthesis you should have been through all the others but this is not always possible with bits of knowledge and therefore as teachers we tend to make false structures to make the illusion of progression. This is another reason SOLO is better for classrooms, it can be access at any level but remains in a structured progression.
You are right though I do need to do say something positive about solo.....