Category Archives: 2013

Bloom’s Taxonomy

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On the theme of popular ideas that I feel a need to critique….

Bloom’s taxonomy has been around for a long time as an aid to teachers, presented as a hierarchy of sophistication of thinking. I was first introduced to it when I started teaching in the 1980s. The college where I currently teach asks all of their instructors to keep it in mind when developing and teaching their courses.

I have two central problems with Bloom’s taxonomy, both of which I will discuss. Then I will mention how it can be used positively.

First of all, when I have used Bloom’s list, or the new revised list, to analyze a lesson and to think about which categories are being tapped into, I find it hard to pigeonhole activities or questions. My teacher education students and I often find that we can put the same questions into multiple categories depending on how we interpret them. In other words, real ideas and lessons do not seem to fit neatly into these categories, and getting agreement on categories is not intuitive, making them less useful. For instance the top of the six categories is: Creating, putting information together in innovative ways. But “Applying” (third level from bottom) on one chart I am reading is listed as using the knowledge gained (level 2) in new ways. What is the difference between applying knowledge in a new way and being creative or innovative?

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A bigger problem I have with Bloom’s taxonomy is that they are presented as a hierarchy, and Bloom meant them that way. In this hierarchy the first stage is knowledge or remembering. In other words, rote learning comes first. The next level, understanding, is that then we learn the meaning of what we memorized. Next we learn to apply the knowledge. After that we can analyze it—break it into parts. Then we can judge it. And finally we can use it creatively. For instance, I was told by someone instructing college professors that they would not get to the highest category with undergraduates, but should reserve that for graduate students!

If Bloom’s taxonomy were used just as a taxonomy—in other words a description of different types of thinking, I can see them as interesting and possibly useful. But generally they are used in the former way as developmental steps to be gone through, as Bloom designed them to be used.

My experience in elementary school bears this out. The “low achievers” and “remedial students” we are told first need to get the basics, and they are given tasks that focus on rote memorization, factual recall and following instructions. The “advanced” or “gifted” students are given assignments that allow them to be creative and analytical. They are asked to evaluate the characters in the story, to do the creative extension activities, and in math they get to do the extra “thinking” problems in the textbook.

This hierarchical idea of thinking ignores what Piaget demonstrated so long ago. Even babies are engaged in all levels of this taxonomy, and the different forms work together synergistically not separately. Learning by rote is the most inefficient way to learn. We are more likely to remember something when it has meaning attached to it. Then even more likely when we apply the knowledge, which is why hands-on and authentic activities are so often recommended. I would want most of the activities that students are engaged in at school to have them using all of these levels of thinking as they carry them out.

Any kindergarten teacher will tell you her kindergartners are creative. In fact there is some research that shows that we actually become less creative and innovative as we progress through school, less able to see the world in new and novel ways, not more so. I hope we do not wait until our students are in graduate school before we let and encourage them be innovative again, the way they naturally were as children.

It is possible to use Bloom’s taxonomy in a positive way. For instance, we create a teaching unit (level 6). We can analyze our unit to see it if includes all the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (level 4). We apply the unit as we carry out our lessons (level 3), for which we must have understanding and knowledge of our content and pedagogy (levels 1 & 2). As we go along and at the end we evaluate the unit and how it went (level 5).

For a full look at this whole idea of teaching children to think, one should read Franks Smith’s book, To Think.

Differentiated Instruction

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One of the buzzwords in education these days is differentiated instruction. In the field of teaching this means that we create different lessons for our different types of students.

“Differentiated instruction is the way in which a teacher anticipates and responds to a variety of student needs in the classroom. To meet student needs, teachers differentiate by modifying the content (what is being taught), the process (how it is taught) and the product (how students demonstrate their learning).”  (from http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/what-is-differentiated-instruction—examples-definition-activities.html)

The idea of differentiation is that some of our students are different—e.g. some are second language learners, some have learning disabilities, some are just behind, some are “gifted” etc. These students need either different lessons, or more commonly alterations and adaptations of the lesson that the “regular” students get.  This is seen as an advance from the one-size-fits-all structure of many lesson plans and textbook lessons. In fact most textbooks now come with suggestions for such adaptations. All of this sounds very good—we are taking seriously that not all students are the same and helping teachers to support such students.

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But is this really such a good idea? I am going to critique this theory on a few levels. One, is it realistic? Elementary school teachers already have a massive job on their hands making lessons for each different subject area. Now they have to multiply that by how ever many different types of student they have. An adaptation for their second language learners. But can they assume all their second language learners need the same adaptation? One might be a new comer, another an intermediate speaker. Then there are the students with learning disabilities. But again—each one of these is likely to have a slightly different disability. And we move on to the “gifted” students. And what if some students fall into more than one category? When and how does a teacher find time to create all these adaptations and manage them?

There is also the factor that this approach singles out some students as “normal” and others as “different” needing differentiation. There is a lot of evidence that labels often become self-fulfilling prophesies for students. It also sends a message about normalcy to both groups. How will this effect the self-identity of these students, and the view of them by other students?

So, should we return to the one-size-fits-all approach so as not to single out students and to make teachers jobs easier? This is one of those false choices. These two choices assume a teacher (or textbook) centered approach to learning.

Another option, that progressive educators have been practicing successfully for over a century is to have lessons and teaching units with activities that are open-ended and allow students to find their own approach that meet their individual interests and abilities while still helping them develop necessary skills and abilities. This actually mirrors how people have learned effectively outside of school since time immemorial where people of differing abilities, backgrounds and interests all work together on common tasks. Thematic instruction, project-based approaches often fit this. One common example of this approach is the Writer’s Workshop. All students work on writing a class book, maybe even within a certain genre or topic, but they all get to write what they want within that framework. They each can work at their own pace and ability, and the teacher and their peers all help each other refine their writing.

Larger projects can use this approach as well. Such a project might be the study of an ancient civilization. It might be the investigation of one’s community. It might be an examination of the physical environment. In this approach students investigate, build, write, read, observe, and create around the theme, each at their own level.

I am not going to say this approach is not a lot of work for the teacher, but it is not about creating lots of individual lessons, but rather creating a climate for learning, making the materials and resources available, and then knowing how to support each student to do their best within that framework.

To see a wonderful example of this approach at the elementary level see the video “We All Know Why we are Here”

Relationships

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The more I think about education and learning, the more I see relationships as the key to what really matters. If I think about all the movies I have seen about “great teaching,” both fictional and those “based on a true story,” while the actually teaching going on in them varies enormously, what they all have in common is a teacher that builds caring strong relationships with their pupils, from “To Sir with Love” “Up the Down Staircase” of the 60s, to more recent movies such as “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and “Dangerous Minds.” But of course that portrayal could just be the license of the writers and directors.

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But I would say I have found the same in my experience as a teacher. I worked with teachers with many different pedagogical approaches. If you have read my previous columns, you will see it is clear I have strong beliefs abut which are more effective. However, the most consistent thing that I noticed of teachers that appeared to me as more effective was that those teachers all had strong relationships with their students. The students knew their teacher expected them to learn, and was there to help them succeed in doing so.

It was really much for this reason that I decided to become an elementary rather than high school teacher. I did not see it as possible to really build those relationships if every hour I had a new group of students. With elementary school kids I had the same ones all day long. (It is also a reason I have never liked “regrouping” with other teachers—I never saw the trade off as worth the loss in knowing my students fully).

One anecdote. At one place I taught, we were using the Reading Recovery program for our struggling first grade readers. Reading Recovery is a strongly researched based program giving intensive support to the lowest readers in first grade, based on some of the best research of learning to read, with a strong research record of its own, and all the practitioners of it have to be credentialed teachers who have gone through an intensive training in the model. However, as a second grade teacher, my struggling readers did not qualify. So instead we used instructional assistants, who had a rudimentary training in more traditional phonics approaches to work with them. I would argue that second graders who are still struggling with reading are probably actually more difficult candidates, as they have a longer history of failure to overcome.

Yet, in the decidedly non-random and small sample that this consisted of, my instructional assistant succeeded with every one she worked with to at least getting them to the point of breaking the code in learning to read. The same cannot be said of the Reading Recovery program that had about a two-thirds success rate with our students. I attribute it to the strong relationship she built with each of them—letting them know that she believed they each would and could learn to read.

This, maybe, is what worries me most about many of today’s’ educational reforms. They make those relationships more difficult. Scripted curriculum, larger classes and school consolidation. use of technology for instruction, and worst of all, the tactics of fear—trying to scare teachers and students into doing a better job. Each of these, in a different way, makes it slightly more difficult for teacher and students to develop strong relationships.

I am about to embark on teaching an all on-line teacher education course. I will see to what degree this mode allows for and interferes with such relationships.

Poverty and Education

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Progressive educator Deborah Meier and Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation have been debating on EdWeeks’s Bridging Differences blog.

In his most recent post Michael claims that poverty is not the issue (even though, as another commentator to his post mentioned, the issue was not originally framed as poverty, but inequality, even in his own words).

From Petrilli’s Bridging Differences blog:

  • “Most were born to single mothers, and their fathers have been absent from the start, or by the time they turn two or three;
  • Most of their mothers were teenagers or in their early 20s when they gave birth;
  • Most of their mothers have very little education—a high school diploma or less–and thus few marketable skills;
  • Many of their mothers suffer from mental illness or addiction or both;

“If we give these families more money…will it erase the huge gaps….between these kids and their age-mates born into two-parent families? With highly-educated mothers and fathers? To believe so, you’d have to put as much faith in cash transfers and social services as some reformers put in schools. You’d have to believe in miracles.”

income gapIn response, I would say that tackling poverty and creating full employment and tackling society’s inequalities would actually help solve those too. Fathers are absent because they cannot support their families. Young motherhood is often a symptom of hopelessness, as is drug addiction. Michael shows data that America’s poverty is not really that much worse than other countries (though still worse even by his figures), so the problem cannot really be poverty (since he also accepts the data purporting that they do better academically). What he leaves out is that even if its true, those other countries do a better job of providing the supports for the poor that he derides as useless–housing, medical care, food, pre- and post- natal care—than the U.S. It may be those supports that keep fathers at home, create less single motherhood, and provide the supports needed for those who are single mothers.

While most critics of our current economic system and I think giving the poor more money and supports is a good idea, we do not see it as the solution either, but rather a band-aid, and when you are bleeding a band-aid is good to have! What is needed is a society that can provide meaningful employment for its citizens, that can provide decent housing, food, medical care, etc. It needs a society organized for a more equitable distribution of the resources.

A better education for the poor helps the individual student succeed, but it does not create more jobs nor reduce the overall rate of poverty nor solve the issues of inequality in a developed country such as ours. It does not change the number of winners and losers, though it just might even the odds a bit as to who gets to be winners and losers.

As John Dewey noted almost a century ago, a certain type of better education, i.e. one that help students participate and understand democracy and develop certain habits of mind, can be one of the aspects to creating that society, but it alone cannot do the job. And most of the reforms that Petrilli supports—more testing and top-down “accountability” based on that testing—actually create a less, not more democratic culture in schools, especially schools for the poor.

The Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test

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This is a wonderful book about the Boston Arts Academy written by the principal. In the genre of Deborah Meier’s The Power of their Ideas, discussing the history of the school to illustrate what it takes to make a powerful school. She describes the ups and downs. She gives stories of particular students. She describes how the school has developed, going through changes and struggles. She uses these stories to help us understand what schools could and can be like, how they can be powerful places for all to learn.

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The Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test:
Lessons form and Innovative Urban School
by Linda Nathan
Beacon Press
189pp

Common Core

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I have been hearing from many friends who work as K-12 teachers, as well as some teacher educator colleagues here in California, that they are excited to see the coming of the Common Core standards. They see in them a move away from an emphasis on teaching by rote and a move toward emphasizing higher order thinking skills. I truly hope that they are right about this. A shift in balance from a preponderance of rote and conformist styles of teaching to more emphasis on creativity and the other aspects of what are called the higher order thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy is needed.

On the other hand, I have been hearing some critiques from other colleagues, especially early childhood educators, about some of the specific standards that they say are developmentally inappropriate. One of those that I hear mentioned often is having young children doing more expository reading and writing.

However, what I want to address here is that regardless of the specifics of the content of the new Common Core standards, they are actually a continuation of what I see as a dangerous trend in the educational policies of this nation.

Common Core standards are now nationally mandated standards. In order to justify such a mandate several assumptions have to be accepted. One is that a lack of uniformity in the curriculum nationwide is part of the problem in today’s education. Such standardized curriculum have often been the mark of totalitarian governments—we used to make fun of how in the Soviet Union on a certain day at a certain time every fourth grader in that nation would be studying the same thing. Is this what we need?

The argument for national standards is that many nations that outscore us on international standardized tests have national standards. First off this connection breaks one of the first rules of research—confusing correlation with causation. Furthermore, other nations that don’t have national standards also beat us, and we beat many that do have them. Not to mention all the problems with comparing the quality of educational systems based on those tests (e.g. who is being tested in each country is not comparable, and is what is being compared what really matters?). Also the meaning of national standards varies enormously. In many countries they are just a general guideline, much like the California frameworks used to be.

The other argument for national standards is that standardization means everyone gets an equal education. The problem, according to this argument, is that in communities serving the poor the children get a watered down curriculum and national standards will mean the poor get the same education as everyone else. This assumes many things—that we want all students to end up the same, that equal inputs equals equal outputs, that as long as the standards are the same, all other differences for rich a poor kids are erased (opportunities beyond school, resources, nutrition, not to mention funding, as we have the least equal school funding of any industrialized nation in the world).

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However, the main issue that I want to discuss here is the assumption of a national consensus on how children learn and what they should learn. In a totalitarian state or dictatorship, the right of the State to dictate such matters is assumed. However, in a democracy, to mandate something nationally should only happen in cases where there is a strong national consensus. Even if there were a majority opinion, such a mandate would just be a form of tyranny of the majority.

Do we have a national consensus on what children should learn and how they should learn it? To many people, at first glance people seem to think it is obvious. We teach kids reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Then I guess history, science, and social studies. But, is there really any such consensus? They have to learn to be fluent in reading and writing, and to know algebra, and the important facts of history and science.

But what does it mean to be fluent in reading and writing? Who says algebra is that important? What are the facts of history and science that are most important? And then there is how do we teach these things, and how do we know if they were learned?

Given that there are major debates on each of the above regularly, it is clear we do not have any actual consensus. Ask a variety of friends regarding how schools should teach, what they should teach, and what the main goal of schools should be, and I bet you will get a wide variety of answers. And that is your friends—once you start asking those in different communities, of different political, religious and cultural persuasions, the diversity increases.

If you ask the leading educational experts of today, you will probably get even less consensus. There is still huge debate among educational theorists about approaches to education. Direct Instruction versus constructivist and discovery approaches. What content is most important. How we measure success. It is just for that reason that most standards have been long comprehensive lists. To reach consensus, the committees making the standards just all accept each other’s ideas.

Now let us look at some things we do know about learning. As all of us notice, children always tend to want to be and act like the important people in their lives, imitating those they see as successful—especially those they want to and think they can be like. We learn from the company we keep and the experiences we have, to sum up and simplify the theories of such giants in learning theory such as Bandura, Vygotsky and Piaget.

Democracy is only partially a set of rules and procedures for making decision and electing representatives. More centrally, it is a way of thinking, a habit of mind. Therefore if we want our students to be democratic citizens they need to be socialized in a democratic environment. Are our classrooms or schools such environments? I doubt many could claim they are. A nationally mandated curriculum makes that virtually impossible. States are required by the Federal Government to impose the standards on their schools. This is done through the school districts who then order their principals to carry it out, who then order the teachers to do so, who then impose the curriculum on the students. We thus end up with people all down the line who are powerless except to carry out the designs of those above them. Those who oppose or disagree with the curriculum will either choose not to be part of such a system, learn to keep quiet about their opposition, or will likely lose their jobs. Children cannot learn democracy in such a culture. A few privileged students may learn it elsewhere or perhaps later, but public schools will not be part of that lesson except as a negative example.

If we look at the most successful schools around the country they do not share a common set of beliefs between them, except maybe a belief that all their students can and will succeed. They each have a very different set of ideas about what is important for children to learn and how best to carry it out. There are the Met schools in which students mostly work with an adviser while engaged in internships with minimal formal classes. There is High Tech High, where students develop projects and inventions often using computer technology. There are the schools of Deborah Meier (CPEI, Mission Hill) based on their five habits of mind and using a graduation by portfolio design. There are the KIPP schools based on a philosophy of no excuses, a longer school day and year and family involvement. There are the Montessori schools based on their particular form of pedagogy and curriculum. Waldorf has theirs, and I could go on and on. Each of these schools or programs has a record of success. Those who work at the school often have developed together those standards or at least chosen to be there because of them, as have the families. It is this freedom that we should be striving for in a democratic nation.

Even if you disagree with me about the central purpose of public education being to prepare students for democracy, or if you disagree about how that is achieved—in fact especially if you do not agree—you are in fact bolstering my argument against the Common Core standards (or any set of national standards). That is, we clearly do not have a consensus, and who has the right in a democracy to impose such a consensus by fiat?