Using the Cognitive Domain to Include Rigor
Bloom’s Taxonomy Helps Develop Rigorous Lessons
May 4, 2009
The need for more rigorous curricula has teachers searching for ways to include rigor in their lessons. Bloom’s taxonomy is a familiar set of objectives that is introduced in teacher education courses that provides a hierarchy of skills for three domains: psychomotor, cognitive and affective. Two of these domains, cognitive and affective, provide a hierarchical structure that can assist with two of the major components of rigor, intellectual complexity and emotional challenges. Teachers and curriculum developers can look to the cognitive domain for ideas for creating more intellectually complex lessons and activities.
Categories from the Cognitive Domain
There are six categories in the cognitive domain. It starts with the most basic or simplest of intellectual or knowledge based skills and increases in complexity. The six categories are:
- Knowledge: demonstrating memory of previously learned material
- Comprehension: showing a basic understanding of facts through organization, translation or description of facts
- Application: using knowledge and comprehension to solve a new problem
- Analysis: breaking down information into component parts and making inferences, identifying causes or finding support for explanations
- Synthesis: creatively combining known elements to create something new or unique
- Evaluation: making judgments about the quality of ideas or materials
Questions that Help Develop Rigorous Lessons
The first two categories in the cognitive domain, knowledge and comprehension, are not rigorous. They are concerned with the students’ ability to learn basic information and demonstrate understanding of new material. It can also be argued that application is not rigorous since it is concerned with the direct usage of known strategy and information to solve something that might be similar. Rigor requires students to be more interactive with the material.
Analysis, synthesis and evaluation all are formed by questions that contain rigorous qualities. The following questions are an example of how these four categories can help develop a rigorous lesson or activity:
- Are students asked to determine an outcome based on a set of facts or events?
- Can students troubleshoot a device and determine why it does not work?
- Are students able to write a persuasive, research and reference based paper or argue their position on a topic?
- Can students predict a possible outcome to situations?
- Can students create or design a new product?
- Can students prioritize their opinions or determine the validity of facts?
- Are students asked to resolve controversies or differences of opinions?
Using questions developed from the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy is a step towards exposing students to more rigor, but higher order thinking skills are not the only part of rigor. Students also need to interact with material that is emotionally challenging and encourages them to consider material with multiple meanings.
Reference: Bloom, B.S. and Krathwohl, D.R. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York, Longmans, Green, 1956.
 |
