Krathwohl A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An Overviewcmapspublic2.ihmc.us/rid=1Q2PTM7HL-26LTFBX-9YN8/Krathwohl...Krathwohl An Overview Like the original Taxonomy, the revision is a

David R. Krathwohl

A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy:An Overview

T HE TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

T is a framework for classifying statements ofwhat we expect or intend students to learn as aresult of instruction. The framework was conceivedas a means of facilitating the exchange of test itemsamong faculty at various universities in order tocreate banks of items, each measuring the sameeducational objective. Benjamin S. Bloom, thenAssociate Director of the Board of Examinations ofthe University of Chicago, initiated the idea, hopingthat it would reduce the labor of preparing annualcomprehensive examinations. To aid in his effort, heenlisted a group of measurement specialists fromacross the United States, many of whom repeatedlyfaced the same problem. This group met about twicea year beginning in 1949 to consider progress, makerevisions, and plan the next steps. Their final draftwas published in 1956 under the title, Taxonomy qf

Educational Objectives: The Classification of Edu-

cational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain

(Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956).'Hereafter, this is referred to as the original Taxono-my. The revision of this framework, which is thesubject of this issue of Theory Into Practice, wasdeveloped in much the same manner 45 years later(Anderson, Krathwohl, et al., 2001). Hereafter, thisis referred to as the revised Taxonomy.2

Bloom saw the original Taxonomy as more thana measurement tool. He believed it could serve as a

* common language about learning goals to facili-tate communication across persons, subject matter,and grade levels;

* basis for determining for a particular course orcurriculum the specific meaning of broad educa-tional goals, such as those found in the currentlyprevalent national, state, and local standards;

* means for determining the congruence of educa-tional objectives, activities, and assessments ina unit, course, or curriculum; and

* panorama of the range of educational possibili-ties against which the limited breadth and depthof any particular educational course or curricu-lum could be contrasted.

The Original TaxonomyThe original Taxonomy provided carefully

developed definitions for each of the six major cat-egories in the cognitive domain. The categorieswere Knowledge, Comprehension, Application,Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.3 With the ex-ception of Application, each of these was brokeninto subcategories. The complete structure of theoriginal Taxonomy is shown in Table 1.

The categories were ordered from simple tocomplex and from concrete to abstract. Further, itwas assumed that the original Taxonomy repre-sented a cumulative hierarchy; that is, mastery of

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 41, Number 4, Autumn 2002Copyright C) 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State University

David R. Krathwohl is Hannah Hammond Professor ofEducation Emeritus at Syracuse University.

KrathwohlAn Overview

Table 1Structure of the Original Taxonomy

1.0 Knowledge

1.10 Knowledge of specifics1.1] Knowledge of terminology1.12 Knowledge of specific facts

1.20 Knowledge of ways and means of dealing withspecifics1.21 Knowledge of conventions1.22 Knowledge of trends and sequences1.23 Knowledge of classifications and categories1.24 Knowledge of criteria1.25 Knowledge of methodology

1.30 Knowledge of universals and abstractions in afield1.31 Knowledge of principles and generaliza-

tions1.32 Knowledge of theories and structures

2.0 Comprehension2.1 Translation2.2 Interpretation2.3 Extrapolation

3.0 Application

4.0 Analysis4.1 Analvsis of elements4.2 Analysis of relationships4.3 Analysis of organizational principles

5.0 Synthesis5.1 Production of a unique communication5.2 Production of a plan, or proposed set of operations5.3 Derivation of a set of abstract relations

6.0 Evaluation6.1 Evaluation in terms of internal evidence6.2 Judgments in terms of external criteria

each simpler category was prerequisite to masteryof the next more complex one.

At the time it was introduced, the term tax-onomy was unfamiliar as an education term. Po-tential users did not understand what it meant,therefore, little attention was given to the originalTaxonomy at first. But as readers saw its poten-tial, the framework became widely known and cit-ed, eventually being translated into 22 languages.

One of the most frequent uses of the originalTaxonomy has been to classify curricular objec-tives and test items in order to show the breadth,or lack of breadth, of the objectives and items

across the spectrum of categories. Almost always,these analyses have shown a heavy emphasis onobjectives requiring only recognition or recall ofinformation, objectives that fall in the Knowledgecategory. But, it is objectives that involve the under-staniding and use of knowledge, those that would beclassified in the categories from Comprehension toSynthesis, that are usually considered the most im-portant goals of education. Such analyses, therefore,have repeatedly provided a basis for moving curricu-la and tests toward objectives that would be classi-fied in the more complex categories.

From One Dimension to Two DimensionsObjectives that describe intended learning

outcomes as the result of instruction are usuallyframed in terms of (a) some subject matter contentand (b) a description of what is to be done with or tothat content. Thus, statements of objectives typicallyconsist of a noun or noun phrase-the subject mattercontent-and a verb or verb phrase-the cognitiveprocess(es). Consider, for example, the followingobjective: The student shall be able to rememberthe law of supply and demand in economics. "Thestu(dent shall be able to" (or "The learner will," orsome other similar phrase) is common to all objec-tives since an objective defines what students areexpected to learn. Statements of objectives oftenomit "The student shall be able to" phrase, speci-fyirig just the unique part (e.g., "Remember theeconomics law of supply and demand."). In thisforn it is clear that the noun phrase is "law ofsupply and demand" and the verb is "remember."

In the original Taxonomy, the Knowledge cate-gory embodied both noun and verb aspects. The nounor sabject matter aspect was specified in Knowledge'sextensive subcategories. The verb aspect was includ-ed in the definition given to Knowledge in that thestudent was expected to be able to recall or recog-nize knowledge. This brought unidimensionality tothe framework at the cost of a Knowledge categorythat was dual in nature and thus different from theother Taxonomic categories. This anomaly was elim-inated in the revised Taxonomy by allowing thesetwo aspects, the noun and verb, to form separate di-mensions, the noun providing the basis for the Knowl-edge dimension and the verb forming the basis forthe Cognitive Process dimension.

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THEORY INTO PRACTICE/Autumn 2002Revising Bloom's Taxonomy

The Knowledge dimensionLike the original, the knowledge categories

of the revised Taxonomy cut across subject matterlines. The new Knowledge dimension, however,contains four instead of three main categories.Three of them include the substance of the subcat-egories of Knowledge in the original framework.But they were reorganized to use the terminology,and to recognize the distinctions of cognitive psy-chology that developed since the original frame-work was devised. A fourth, and new category,Metacognitive Knowledge, provides a distinctionthat was not widely recognized at the time the orig-inal scheme was developed. Metacognitive Knowl-edge involves knowledge about cognition in generalas well as awareness of and knowledge about one'sown cognition (Pintrich, this issue). It is of in-creasing significance as researchers continue todemonstrate the importance of students being madeaware of their metacognitive activity, and then us-ing this knowledge to appropriately adapt the waysin which they think and operate. The four catego-ries with their subcategories are shown in Table 2.

The Cognitive Process dimensionThe original number of categories, six, was re-

tained, but with important changes. Three categorieswere renamed, the order of two was interchanged,and those category names retained were changed toverb form to fit the way they are used in objectives.

The verb aspect of the original Knowledgecategory was kept as the first of the six major cat-egories, but was renamed Remember. Comprehen-sion was renamed because one criterion forselecting category labels was the use of terms thatteachers use in talking about their work. Becauseunderstand is a commonly used term in objectives,its lack of inclusion was a frequent criticism of theoriginal Taxonomy. Indeed, the original group con-sidered using it, but dropped the idea after furtherconsideration showed that when teachers say theywant the student to "really" understand, they meananything from Comprehension to Synthesis. But,to the revising authors there seemed to be popularusage in which understand was a widespread syn-onym for comprehending. So, Comprehension, thesecond of the original categories, was renamedUnderstand. 4

Table 2Structure of the Knowledge Dimension

of the Revised Taxonomy

A. Factual Knowledge - The basic elements that stu-dents must know to be acquainted with a disciplineor solve problems in it.Aa. Knowledge of terminologyAb. Knowledge of specific details and elements

B. Conceptual Knowledge - The interrelationshipsamong the basic elements within a larger structurethat enable them to function together.Ba. Knowledge of classifications and categoriesBb. Knowledge of principles and generalizationsBc. Knowledge of theories, models, and structures

C. Procedural Knowledge - How to do something; meth-ods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms,techniques, and methods.Ca. Knowledge of subject-specific skills and al-

gorithmsCb. Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and

methodsCc. Knowledge of criteria for determining when

to use appropriate procedures

D. Metacognitive Knowledge - Knowledge of cognitionin general as well as awareness and knowledge ofone's own cognition.Da. Strategic knowledgeDb. Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including

appropriate contextual and conditionalknowledge

Dc. Self-knowledge

Application, Analysis, and Evaluation were re-tained, but in their verb forms as Apply, Analyze,and Evaluate. Synthesis changed places with Evalu-ation and was renamed Create. All the original sub-categories were replaced with gerunds, and called"cognitive processes." With these changes, the cate-gories and subcategories-cognitive processes-of theCognitive Process dimension are shown in Table 3.

Whereas the six major categories were given

far more attention than the subcategories in the orig-inal Taxonomy, in the revision, the 19 specific cog-nitive processes within the six cognitive processcategories receive the major emphasis. Indeed, thenature of the revision's six major categories emerg-es most clearly from the descriptions given the spe-cific cognitive processes. Together, these processescharacterize each category's breadth and depth.

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Like the original Taxonomy, the revision is ahierarchy in the sense that the six major categoriesof the Cognitive Process dimension are believed todiffer in their complexity, with remember beingless complex than understand, which is less com-plex than apply, and so on. However, because therevision gives much greater weight to teacher us-age, the requirement of a strict hierarchy has beenrelaxed to allow the categories to overlap one an-other. This is most clearly illustrated in the case ofthe category Understand. Because its scope hasbeen considerably broadened over Comprehend inthe original framework, some cognitive processesassociated with Understand (e.g., Explaining) aremore cognitively complex than at least one of thecognitive processes associated with Apply (e.g.,Executing). If, however, one were to locate the"center point" of each of the six major categorieson a scale of judged complexity, they would likelyform a scale from simple to complex. In this sense,the Cognitive Process dimension is a hierarchy,and probably one that would be supported as wellas was the original Taxonomy in terms of empiri-cal evidence (see Anderson, Krathwohl, et al., 2001,chap. 16).

The Taxonomy TableIn the revised Taxonomy, the fact that any

objective would be represented in two dimensionsimmediately suggested the possibility of construct-ing a iwo-dimensional table, which we termed theTaxonomy Table. The Knowledge dimension wouldform the vertical axis of the table, whereas theCognitive Process dimension would form the hori-zontal axis. The intersections of the knowledge andcognitive process categories would form the cells.Consequently, any objective could be classified inthe Taxonomy Table in one or more cells that cor-respond with the intersection of the column(s) ap-propriate for categorizing the verb(s) and the row(s)appropriate for categorizing the noun(s) or nounphrase(s). To see how this placement of objectivesis accomplished, consider the following exampleadapted from the State of Minnesota's LanguageArts Standards for Grade 12:

A sttident shall demonstrate the ability to write us-ing grammar, language mechanics, and other con-ventions of standard written English for a variety of

Table 3Structure of the Cognitive Process

Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy

1.0 Remember - Retrieving relevant knowledge fromlong-term memory.1.1 Recognizing1.2 Recalling

2.01 Understand - Determining the meaning of instruc-tional messages, including oral, written, and graphiccommunication.2.1 Interpreting2.2 Exemplifying2.3 Classifying2.4 Summarizing2.5 Inferring2.6 Comparing2.7 Explaining

3.6 Apply - Carrying out or using a procedure in a givensituation.3.1 Executing3.2 Implementing

4.0 Analyze - Breaking material into its constituent partsand detecting how the parts relate to one another andto an overall structure or purpose.4.1 Differentiating4.2 Organizing4.3 Attributing

5.0 Evaluate - Making judgments based on criteria andstandards.5.1 Checking5.2 Critiquing

6.0 Create - Putting elements together to form a novel,coherent whole or make an original product.6.1 Generating6.2 Planning6.3 Producing

academic purposes and situations by writing originalcompositions that analyze patterns and relationshipsof ideas, topics, or themes. (State of Minnesota, 1998)

We begin by simplifying the standard (i.e., objec-tive) by ignoring certain parts, particularly restric-tions such as "using grammar, language mechanics,and other conventions of standard written Englishfor a variety of academic purposes and situations."(Some of these specify scoring dimensions that, ifnot done correctly, would cause the student's com-position to be given a lower grade.) Omitting theserestrictions leaves us with the following:

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THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Autumn 2002Revising Bloom's Taxonomy

Write original compositions that analyze patterns andrelationships of ideas, topics, or themes.

Placement of the objective along the Knowl-edge dimension requires a consideration of the nounphrase "patterns and relationships of ideas, topics, orthemes." "Patterns and relationships" are associatedwith B. Conceptual Knowledge. So we would classi-fy the noun component as an example of B. Concep-tual Knowledge. Concerning the placement of theobjective along the Cognitive Process dimension, wenote there are two verbs: write and analyze. Writ-ing compositions calls for Producing, and, as such,would be classified as an example of 6. Create.Analyze, of course, would be 4. Analyze. Sinceboth categories of cognitive processes are likely tobe involved (with students being expected to ana-lyze before they create), we would place this ob-jective in two cells of the Taxonomy Table: B4,Analyze Conceptual Knowledge, and B6, Create[based on] Conceptual Knowledge (see Figure 1).We use the bracketed [based on] to indicate thatthe creation itself isn't conceptual knowledge; rath-er, the creation is primarily based on, in this case,conceptual knowledge.

By using the Taxonomy Table, an analysisof the objectives of a unit or course provides,among other things, an indication of the extent towhich more complex kinds of knowledge and cog-nitive processes are involved. Since objectives from

Understand through Create are usually consideredthe most important outcomes of education, theirinclusion, or lack of it, is readily apparent fromthe Taxonomy Table. Consider this example fromone of the vignettes in the revised Taxonomy vol-ume in which a teacher, Ms. Gwendolyn Airasian,describes a classroom unit in which she integratesPre-Revolutionary War colonial history with a per-suasive writing assignment. Ms. Airasian lists fourspecific objectives. She wants her students to:

I. Remember the specific parts of the ParliamentaryActs (e.g., the Sugar, Stamp, and TownshendActs);

2. Explain the consequences of the ParliamentaryActs for different colonial groups;

3. Choose a colonial character or group and writea persuasive editorial stating his/her/its positionon the Acts (the editorial must include at leastone supporting reason not specifically taught orcovered in the class); and

4. Self- and peer edit the editorial.

Categorizing the first objective, 1. Rememberis clearly the cognitive process, and "specific partsof the Parliamentary Acts" is Ab. Knowledge of spe-cific details or elements, a subcategory of A. Factu-al Knowledge. So this objective is placed in cellAl.5 "Explain," the verb in the second objective,is the seventh cognitive process, 2.7 Explaining,

The Cognitive Process Dimension

The Knowledge 1. Remember 2. Understand 3. Apply 4. Analyze 5. Evaluate 6. CreateDimension

A. FactualKnowledge

B. Conceptual X XKnowledge

C. ProceduralKnowledge

D. MetacognitiveKnowledge

Figure 1. The placement in the Taxonomy Table of the State of Minnesota's Language Arts Standard for

Grade 12.

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under 2. Understand. Since the student is asked toexplain the "consequences of the ParliamentaryActs," one can infer that "consequences" refers togeneralized statements about the Acts' aftereffectsand is closest to Bc. Knowledge of theories, models,and structures. The type of knowledge, then, wouldbe B. Conceptual Knowledge. This objective wouldbe classified in cell B2.

The key verb in the third objective is "write."Like the classification of the State of Minnesota'sstandard discussed above, writing is 6.3 Produc-ing, a process within 6. Create. To describe "his/her/its position on the Acts" would require somecombination of A. Factual Knowledge and B. Con-ceptual Knowledge, so this objective would be clas-sified in two cells: A6 and B6. Finally, the fourthobjective involves the verbs "self-edit" and "peeredit." Editing is a type of evaluation, so the processinvolved is 5. Evaluate. The process of evaluationwill involve criteria, which are classified as B.Conceptual Knowledge, so the fourth objective wouldfall in cell B5. The completed Taxonomy Table forthis unit's objectives is shown in Figure 2.

From the table, one can quickly visually de-termine the extent to which the more complex cat-egories are represented. Ms. Airasian's unit is quitegood in this respect. Only one objective deals withthe Remember category; the others involve cogni-tive processes that are generally recognized as the

more important and long-lasting fruits of educa-tion-the more complex ones.

In addition to showing what was included,the Taxonomy Table also suggests what might havebeen but wasn't. Thus, in Figure 2, the two blankbottom rows raise questions about whether theremight have been procedural or metacognitiveknowledge objectives that could have been includ-ed. For example, are there procedures to follow inediting that the teacher could explicitly teach thestudents? Alternatively, is knowledge of the kinds oferrors common in one's own writing and preferredways of correcting them an important metacognitiveoutcome of self-editing that could have been em-phasized? The panorama of possibilities presentedby the Taxonomy Table causes one to look at blankareas and reflect on missed teaching opportunities.

The Taxonomy Table can also be used to clas-sify the instructional and learning activities usedto achieve the objectives, as well as the assess-ments employed to determine how well the objec-tives were mastered by the students. The use ofthe Taxonomy Table for these purposes is describedand illustrated in the six vignettes contained in therevised Taxonomy volume (Anderson, Krathwohl,et al., 2001, chaps. 8-13). In the last two articlesof this issue, Airasian discusses assessment in great-er detail, and Anderson describes and illustratesalignment.



A. Factual Objective 1 Objective 3Knowledge

B. Conceptual Objective 2 Objective 4 Objective 3Knowledge



Figure 2. The classification in a Taxonomy Table of the Four objectives of Ms. Airasian's unit integrat-ing Pre-Revolutionary War colonial history with a persuasive writing assignment.

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THEORY INTO PRACTiCE / Autumn 2002Revising Bloom's Taxonomy

ConclusionThe Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is

a scheme for classifying educational goals, objec-tives, and, most recently, standards. It provides an

organizational structure that gives a commonlyunderstood meaning to objectives classified in one

of its categories, thereby enhancing communica-tion. The original Taxonomy consisted of six cate-

gories, nearly all with subcategories. They were

arranged in a cumulative hierarchical framework;achievement of the next more complex skill or abil-

ity required achievement of the prior one. The orig-

inal Taxonomy volume emphasized the assessmentof learning with many examples of test items (large-

ly multiple choice) provided for each category.Our revision of the original Taxonomy is a

two-dimensional framework: Knowledge and Cog-

nitive Processes. The former most resembles the

subcategories of the original Knowledge category.The latter resembles the six categories of the orig-

inal Taxonomy with the Knowledge category named

Remember, the Comprehension category named

Understand, Synthesis renamed Create and madethe top category, and the remaining categorieschanged to their verb forms: Apply, Analyze, and

Evaluate. They are arranged in a hierarchical struc-

ture, but not as rigidly as in the original Taxonomy.In combination, the Knowledge and Cognitive

Process dimensions form a very useful table, the Tax-

onomy Table. Using the Table to classify objectives,

activities, and assessments provides a clear, concise,visual representation of a particular course or unit.

Once completed, the entries in the Taxonomy Ta-

ble can be used to examine relative emphasis, cur-riculum alignment, and missed educationalopportunities. Based on this examination, teachers

can decide where and how to improve the plan-

ning of curriculum and the delivery of instruction.

Notes1. The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook

II, The Affective Domain was published later (Krath-wohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964). A taxonomy for thepsychomotor domain was never published by theoriginating group, but some were published by Simp-son (1966), Dave (1970), and Harrow (1972).

2. The revised Taxonomy is published both in a hard-cover complete edition and a paperback abridgment,which omits Chapters 15, The Taxonomy in Rela-tion to Alternative Frameworks; 16, Empirical Stud-ies of the Structure of the Taxonomy; 17, UnsolvedProblems; and Appendix C, Data Used in the Meta-Analysis in Chapter 15.

3. Terms appearing in the original Taxonomy appearin italics with initial caps; terms in the revised Tax-onomy add boldface to these specifications.

4. Problem solving and critical thinking were two oth-er terms commonly used by teachers that were alsoconsidered for inclusion in the revision. But unlikeunderstand, there seemed to be no popular usagethat could be matched to a single category. There-fore, to be categorized in the Taxonomy, one mustdetermine the intended specific meaning of prob-lem solving and critical thinking from the contextin which they are being used.

5. One can use the subcategories to designate the rowsand columns; however, for the sake of simplicity, theexamples make use of only the major categories.

ReferencesAnderson, L.W. (Ed.), Krathwohl, D.R. (Ed.), Airasian,

P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R.,Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy forlearning, teaching, and assessing: A revision ofBloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Com-plete edition). New York: Longman.

Bloom, B.S. (Ed.), Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill,W.H., & Krathwohl, D.R. (1956). Taxonomy ofeducational objectives: The classification of edu-cational goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain.New York: David McKay.

Dave, R.H. (1970). Psychomotor levels. In R.J. Arm-strong (Ed.), Developing and writing educationalobjectives (pp. 33-34). Tucson AZ: EducationalInnovators Press.

Harrow, A.J. (1972). A taxonomy of the psychomotordomain: A guide for developing behavioral objec-tives. New York: David McKay.

Krathwohl, D.R., Bloom, B.S., & Masia, B.B. (1964).Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classifi-cation of educational goals. Handbook 11: The af-fective domain. New York: David McKay.

Simpson, B.J. (1966). The classification of educationalobjectives: Psychomotor domain. Illinois Journalof Home Economics, 10(4), 110-144.

State of Minnesota. (1998). State educational standardscoupled to lesson plans and resources: Language Arts,High standards (1998): Grade 12: Writing-Unit: De-scription, Academic. Retrieved April 20, 2001, fromhttp://www.statestandards.com/showstate.asp?st=mn.

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Paul R. Pintrich

The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge inLearning, Teaching, and Assessing

A s KRATHWOHL (THIS ISSUE) STATES, the re-A vised Taxonomy contains four general knowl-edge categories: Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, andMetacognitive. While the first three categories wereincluded in the original Taxonomy, the Metacogni-tive Knowledge category was added. The purpose ofthis article is to discuss the Metacognitive Knowl-edge category and its implications for learning,teaching, and assessing in the classroom.

Metacognitive knowledge involves knowledgeabout cognition in general, as well as awareness ofand knowledge about one's own cognition. One ofthe hallmarks of psychological and educational theo-ry and research on learning since the original Taxon-omy was published is the emphasis on helpingstudents become more knowledgeable of and respon-sible for their own cognition and thinking. Thischange cuts across all the different theoretical ap-proaches to learning and development-from neo-Piagetian models, to cognitive science and informationprocessing models, to Vygotskian and cultural orsituated learning models. Regardless of their theo-retical perspective, researchers agree that with de-velopment students become more aware of theirown thinking as well as more knowledgeable aboutcognition in general. Furthermore, as they act onthis awareness they tend to learn better (Brans-ford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). The labels for this

general developmental trend vary from theory totheory, but they include the development of meta-cognitive knowledge, metacognitive awareness,self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-regulation.

Although there are many definitions and mod-els of metacognition, an important distinction isone between (a) knowledge of cognition and (b)the processes involving the monitoring, control, andregulation of cognition (e.g., Bransford et al, 1999;Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983;Flavell, 1979; Paris & Winograd, 1990; Pintrich,Wolters, & Baxter, 2000; Schneider & Pressley,1997). This basic distinction between metacogni-tive knowledge and metacognitive control or self-regulatory processes parallels the two dimensionsin our Taxonomy Table.

Metacognitive knowledge includes knowledgeof general strategies that might be used for differ-eni tasks, knowledge of the conditions under whichthese strategies might be used, knowledge of theextent to which the strategies are effective, andknowledge of self (Flavell, 1979; Pintrich et al.,2000; Schneider & Pressley, 1997). For example,learners can know about different strategies for read-ing a textbook as well as strategies to monitor andcheck their comprehension as they read. Learners alsoactivate relevant knowledge about their own strengthsand weaknesses pertaining to the task as well astheir motivation for completing the task. Supposelearners realize they already know a fair amount

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 41, Number 4, Autumn 2002Copyright (D 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State University

Paul R. Pintrich is a professor of education at theUniversity of Michigan.


about the topic of a chapter in a textbook (whichthey may perceive as a strength), and that they areinterested in this topic (which may enhance theirmotivation). This realization could lead them tochange their approach to the task, such as adjustingtheir reading approach or rate. Finally, learners alsocan activate the relevant situational or conditionalknowledge for solving a problem in a certain context(e.g., in this classroom; on this type of test; in thistype of real-life situation, etc.). They may know, forexample, that multiple-choice tests require only rec-ognition of the correct answers, not actual recall ofthe information, as required in essay tests. This typeof metacognitive knowledge might influence how theysubsequently prepare for an examination.

In contrast, metacognitive control and self-regulatory processes are cognitive processes thatlearners use to monitor, control, and regulate theircognition and learning. As such, they fit under thesix cognitive process categories and specific cogni-tive processes in the revised Taxonomy. The meta-cognitive and self-regulatory processes are wellrepresented in tasks such as checking, planning, andgenerating. Accordingly, on the Knowledge dimen-sion, Metacognitive Knowledge categories referonly to knowledge of cognitive strategies, not theactual use of those strategies.

Three Types of Metacognitive KnowledgeIn Flavell's (1979) classic article on meta-

cognition, he suggested that metacognition includ-ed knowledge of strategy, task, and personvariables. We represented this general frameworkin our categories by including students' knowledgeof general strategies for learning and thinking (Da- Strategic knowledge) and their knowledge of cog-nitive tasks as well as when and why to use thesedifferent strategies (Db - Knowledge about cogni-tive tasks, including appropriate contextual andconditional knowledge). Finally, we includedknowledge about the self (the person variable) inrelation to both cognitive and motivational com-ponents of performance (Dc - Self-knowledge).

Strategic knowledgeStrategic knowledge is knowledge of general

strategies for learning, thinking, and problem solv-ing. These strategies are applicable across all or

most academic disciplines or subject matter do-mains in contrast to more specific strategies fromthe disciplines or domains. Consequently, thesestrategies can be used across a large number ofdifferent tasks and domains, rather than being mostuseful for one particular type of task in one specif-ic subject area (e.g., solving a quadratic equationin mathematics, applying Ohm's law in science).

Strategic knowledge includes knowledge of thevarious strategies students might use to memorizematerial, to extract meaning from text, and to com-prehend what they hear in classrooms or what theyread in books and other course materials. Althoughthere are a large number of different learning strat-egies, they can be grouped into three general cate-gories: rehearsal, elaboration, and organizational(Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). Rehearsal strategiesrefer to the strategy of repeating words or terms to beremembered over and over to oneself, generally notthe most effective strategy for learning more com-plex cognitive processes. In contrast, elaboration strat-egies include various mnemonics for memory tasks,as well strategies such as summarizing, paraphras-ing, and selecting main ideas from texts. Theseelaboration strategies result in deeper processingof the material to be learned and result in bettercomprehension and learning than do rehearsal strat-egies. Finally, organizational strategies includevarious forms of outlining, concept mapping, andnote taking, where the student makes connectionsbetween and among content elements. Like elabo-ration strategies, these organizational strategiesusually result in better comprehension and learn-ing than rehearsal strategies.

In addition to these general learning strate-gies, students can have knowledge of various meta-cognitive strategies that will be useful to them inplanning, monitoring, and regulating their learningand thinking. These strategies include ways indi-viduals plan their cognition (e.g., set subgoals),monitor their cognition (e.g., ask themselves ques-tions as they read a piece of text; check their answerto a math problem), and regulate their cognition (e.g.,re-read something they don't understand; go backand "repair" their calculating mistake in a math prob-lem). Again, in this category we refer to students'knowledge of these various strategies, not their ac-tual use.

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PintrichMetacognative Knowledge in Learning

Finally, there are a number of general strate-gies for problem solving and thinking. These strat-egies represent the various heuristics individualscan use to solve problems, particularly ill-definedproblems where there is no definitive algorithmicsolution. In the problem-solving area they can in-clude the knowledge of means-ends analysis as wellas knowledge of working backward from the de-sired goal state. In terms of thinking, there are anumber of general strategies for deductive and in-ductive thinking, such as evaluating the validity ofdifferent logical statements, avoiding circularity inarguments, making appropriate inferences from dif-ferent sources of data, and drawing on appropriatesamples to make inferences.

Knowledge about cognitive tasksIn addition to knowledge about various strat-

egies, individuals also accumulate knowledge aboutdifferent cognitive tasks. Knowledge of tasks in-cludes knowledge that different tasks can be moreor less difficult and may require different cogni-tive strategies. A recall task is more difficult thana recognition task, for example, because in the re-call task, the individual must actively search mem-ory and retrieve the relevant information; while inthe recognition task, the emphasis is on discrimi-nating among alternatives and selecting the appro-priate answer.

As students develop their knowledge of dif-ferent learning and thinking strategies and theiruse, this knowledge reflects the "what" and "how" ofthe different strategies. However, this knowledgemay not be enough for expertise in learning. Stu-dents also must develop some knowledge aboutthe "when" and "why" of using these strategiesappropriately (Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983).Because not all strategies are appropriate for allsituations, the learner must develop some knowl-edge of the different conditions and tasks wherethe different strategies are used most appropriately.

If one thinks of strategies as cognitive "tools"that help learners construct their understanding,then just as the carpenter uses a variety of differ-ent tools for all the tasks that go into building ahouse, the learner must use different tools for dif-ferent cognitive tasks. Of course one tool, such asa hammer, can be used in different ways for dif-

ferent tasks, but this is not necessarily the mostaclaptive use of the hammer-particularly if thereare other tools that are better suited to the task. Inthe same way, specific learning and thinking strat-egies are better suited to different tasks. For exam-ple, if one confronts a novel problem that isill-defined, then general problem-solving heuris-tics may be very useful. In contrast, if one con-fronts a physics problem regarding the second lawof thermodynamics, more specific proceduralknowledge, not general metacognitive knowledge,will be much more useful and adaptive for thistask. An important aspect of learning about strate-gies is the knowledge of when and why to usethem appropriately.

Another important aspect of conditionalknowledge concerns the local situational and gen-eral social, conventional, and cultural norms forthe use of different strategies. For example, a teach-er may encourage the use of certain strategies forreading. A student who knows the teacher's strate-gic preferences is better able to adapt to the de-mands of this teacher's classroom. In the samemanner, different cultures may have norms for theuse of different strategies and ways of thinkingabout problems. Again, knowing these norms canhe:lp students adapt to the demands of the culturein terms of solving the problem.

Self-knowledgeAlong with knowledge of different strategies

and knowledge of cognitive tasks, Flavell (1979)proposed that self-knowledge was an importantcomponent of metacognition. Self-knowledge in-cludes knowledge of one's strengths and weakness-es. For example, a student who knows that he orshe generally does better on multiple-choice teststhan on essay tests has some metacognitive self-knowledge about his or her test-taking ability. Thisknowledge may be useful to the student as he orshe studies for the two different types of tests.One of the hallmarks of experts is that they knowwhen they don't know something and have to relyon some general strategies for finding the appro-priate information. This self-awareness of thebreadth and depth of one's own knowledge base isan important aspect of self-knowledge. Finally, in-dividuals need to be aware of the different types

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of strategies they are likely to rely on in differentsituations. An awareness that one overrelies on aparticular strategy when there may be other moreadaptive strategies for the task could lead to thepossibility of a change in strategy use.

In addition to general self-knowledge, individ-uals also have beliefs about their motivation. Theseinclude judgments of their capability to perform atask (self-efficacy), their goals for completing a task(learning or just getting a good grade), and the inter-est and value the task has for them (high interest andhigh value versus low interest and low value). Al-though these motivational beliefs are usually not con-sidered in cognitive models, there is a fairlysubstantial body of literature emerging that showsimportant links between students' motivational be-liefs and their cognition and learning (Pintrich &Schrauben, 1992; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Snow,Corno, & Jackson, 1996). It seems important thatjust as students need to develop self-knowledge andself-awareness about their knowledge and cognition,they also need to develop self-knowledge and self-awareness about their motivation.

Although self-knowledge itself can be an im-portant aspect of metacognitive knowledge, it isimportant to underscore the idea that accuracy ofself-knowledge seems to be most crucial for learn-ing. That is, we are not advocating that teacherstry to boost students' self-esteem (a completelydifferent construct from self-knowledge) by pro-viding students with positive, but false, inaccurate,and misleading feedback about their strengths andweaknesses. It is much more important to haveaccurate perceptions and judgments of one's knowl-edge base and expertise than to have inflated andinaccurate self-knowledge (Pintrich & Schunk,2002). If students do not realize they do not knowsome aspect of factual, conceptual, or proceduralknowledge, it is unlikely they will make any effort toacquire or construct new knowledge. Accordingly,we stress the need for teachers to help students makeaccurate assessments of their self-knowledge, notinflate their self-esteem.

Implications for Learning,Teaching, and Assessing

Metacognitive knowledge can play an impor-tant role in student learning and, by implication, in

the ways students are taught and assessed in theclassroom (Bransford et al., 1999). First, as previ-ously noted, metacognitive knowledge of strate-gies and tasks, as well as self-knowledge, is linkedto how students will learn and perform in the class-room. Students who know about the different kindsof strategies for learning, thinking, and problemsolving will be more likely to use them. After all,if students do not know of a strategy, they will notbe able to use it. Students who do know aboutdifferent strategies for memory tasks, for example,are more likely to use them to recall relevant in-formation. Similarly, students who know about dif-ferent learning strategies are more likely to usethem when studying. And, students who know aboutgeneral strategies for thinking and problem solv-ing are more likely to use them when confrontingdifferent classroom tasks (Bransford et al., 1999;Schneider & Pressley, 1997; Weinstein & Mayer,1986). Metacognitive knowledge of all these dif-ferent strategies enables students to perform betterand learn more.

In addition, metacognitive knowledge of allthese different strategies seems to be related to thetransfer of learning; that is, the ability to use knowl-edge gained in one setting or situation in another(Bransford et al., 1999). Students are often con-fronted with new tasks that require knowledge andskills they have not yet learned. In this case, theycannot rely solely on their specific prior knowl-edge or skills to help them on the new task. Whenexperts find themselves in this situation, they arelikely to use more general strategies to help themthink about or solve the problem. In the same man-ner, students, who by definition lack expertise inmany areas, need to know about different generalstrategies for learning and thinking in order to usegeneral strategies for new or challenging tasks.

Finally, in terms of learning, self-knowledgecan be either an important facilitator or a constraint.Students who know their own strengths and weak-nesses can adjust their own cognition and thinkingto be more adaptive to diverse tasks and, thus, fa-cilitate learning. If, for example, a student realizesthat she does not know very much about a particu-lar topic, she might pay more attention to the topicwhile reading and use different strategies to makesure she understands the topic being studied. In

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the same manner, if a student is aware that she hasdifficulties on certain tests (e.g., mathematics ver-sus history tests), then she can prepare for an up-coming mathematics test in an appropriate manner.Students who lack knowledge of their own strengthsand weaknesses will be less likely to adapt to dif-ferent situations and regulate their own learning inthem. For example, if a student reads a text andthinks he understands it, but in reality does not,then he will be less likely to go back and reread orreview the text to make sure it is understood. Sim-ilarly, a student who believes he understands thematerial thoroughly will not study for an upcom-ing test to the same extent as a student who knowshe does not understand the material. A student whobelieves he understands the material when he doesnot will not do well on the test of that materialbecause he did not study as well as the studentwho had an accurate perception of his lack ofknowledge. Accordingly, lack of self-knowledgecan be a constraint on learning.

There are several implications of the rela-tionships among metacognitive knowledge, learn-ing, teaching, and assessing. In terms of instruction,there is a need to teach for metacognitive knowl-edge explicitly. Teachers may do this in some les-sons, but in many cases the instruction is moreimplicit. Simply stated, many teachers assume thatsome students will be able to acquire metacogni-tive knowledge on their own, while others lack theability to do so. Of course, some students do ac-quire metacognitive knowledge through experienceand with age, but many more students fail to doso. In our work with college students (see Hofer,Yu, & Pintrich, 1998; Pintrich, McKeachie, & Lin,1987), we are continually surprised at the numberof students who come to college having very littlemetacognitive knowledge; knowledge about differ-ent strategies, different cognitive tasks, and, par-ticularly, accurate knowledge about themselves.Given the fact that students who go on to collegeare more likely to be better students in generalsuggests that there is a need to explicitly teachmetacognitive knowledge in K-12 settings.

Having said this, it is not our expectationthat teachers would teach for metacognitive knowl-edge in separate courses or separate units, althoughthis can certainly be done (see Hofer et al., 1998;

Pintrich et al., 1987). It is more important thatmetacognitive knowledge is embedded within theusual content-driven lessons in different subjecta.reas. General strategies for thinking and problemsolving can be taught in the context of English,mathematics, science, social studies, art, music, andp:hysical education courses. Science teachers, forexample, can teach general scientific methods andprocedures, but learning will likely be more effec-tive when it is tied to specific science content, nottaught in the abstract. Of course, in some skill ar-eas, such as reading or writing, the teaching ofmetacognitive knowledge about different generalstrategies for reading comprehension or writing isboth acceptable and desirable.

The key is that teachers plan to include somegoals for teaching metacognitive knowledge in theirregular unit planning, and then actually try to teachand assess for the use of this type of knowledge asthey teach other content knowledge. One of themost important aspects of teaching for metacogni-tive knowledge is the explicit labeling of it forstudents. For example, during a lesson, the teachercan note occasions when metacognitive knowledgecomes up, such as in a reading group discussion ofthe different strategies students use to read a sec-tion of a story. This explicit labeling and discus-sion helps students connect the strategies (and theirnames/labels) to other knowledge they may alreadyhave about strategies and reading. In addition, mak-ing the discussion of metacognitive knowledge partof the everyday discourse of the classroom helpsfoster a language for students to talk about theirown cognition and learning. The shared languageand discourse about cognition and learning amongpeers and between students and teacher helps stu-dents become more aware of their own metacogni-tive knowledge as well as their own strategies forlearning and thinking. As they hear and see howtheir classmates approach a task, they can com-pare their own strategies with their classmates' andmake judgments about the relative utility of differ-ent strategies. This type of discourse and discus-sion helps makes cognition and learning moreexplicit and less opaque to students, rather thanbeing something that happens mysteriously or thatsome students "get" and learn and others struggleand don't learn.

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In addition to the development of a class-room discourse around metacognitive knowledge,another important instructional strategy is the mod-eling of strategies, accompanied by an explanationof them. For example, as the teacher is solving aproblem for the class, he might talk aloud abouthis own cognitive processes as he works throughthe problem. This provides a model for students,showing them how they use strategies in solvingreal problems. In addition, the teacher also mightdiscuss why he is using this particular strategy forthis specific problem, thereby also engaging stu-dents in issues concerning the conditional knowl-edge that governs when and why to use differentstrategies. As experts in their field, teachers haveall kinds of implicit knowledge about strategiesand when and why they are appropriate to use;however, students often lack the means to gain ac-cess to this knowledge. If the knowledge is nevershared through discussion, modeling, or explicitinstruction, it is difficult for students to learn.

In terms of implications for assessment, theinclusion of metacognitive knowledge in the re-vised Taxonomy is not meant to generate the de-velopment of separate sections of standardized orformal classroom tests on metacognitive knowl-edge. Metacognitive knowledge is important interms of how it is used by students to facilitatetheir own learning. In this sense, it is more likelythat any assessment of metacognitive knowledgeby teachers will be informal rather than formal.For example, if teachers are teaching and discuss-ing metacognitive knowledge as part of their nor-mal classroom discourse, they will need to talk totheir students about metacognitive knowledge and,perhaps more importantly, actually listen to the stu-dents as they talk about their own cognition andlearning. As a result of these conversations, teach-ers will become aware of the general level of meta-cognitive knowledge in their classrooms and willbe able to judge fairly quickly the level and depthof students' metacognitive knowledge. In manyrespects, this is no different from what teachers doto assess the level of content knowledge their stu-dents bring to their classrooms. They start a dis-cussion, ask some questions, listen to the answers,and talk with the students. Based on this discourse,they can quickly estimate the depth of students'

prior knowledge. This type of informal assessmentcan be used to calibrate the instruction to help stu-dents gain both content knowledge (whether it befactual, conceptual, or procedural) and metacogni-tive knowledge.

From these informal "assessment conversa-tions," teachers also may be able to make infer-ences about the level of metacognitive knowledgeof individual students. Just as there is variance inthe content knowledge that students bring to theclassroom, it is likely there will be a wide distri-bution of metacognitive knowledge in a class of20-30 students. This information about individualstudents can be used to adapt instruction to indi-vidual differences. Teachers can talk to studentsindividually or in small groups to estimate levelsof metacognitive knowledge. Finally, more formalquestionnaires and interview procedures can beused to assess students' metacognitive knowledgeconcerning their learning strategies as well as theirknowledge about different tasks and contexts (seeBaker & Cerro, 2000; Pintrich et al., 2000).

As mentioned previously, an important compo-nent of metacognitive knowledge is self-knowledge.In terms of assessment, a focus on self-knowledgeimplies that students should have the opportunityto assess their own strengths and weaknesses. Al-though this will occasionally happen in larger, pub-lic groups, it is important for motivational reasonsthat self-assessment is more private, occurring be-tween one teacher and one student (see Pintrich &Schunk, 2002). In this way, students are able tomeet individually with their teachers to discuss theirperceptions of their own strengths and weakness-es, and teachers can provide them with feedbackabout these perceptions. Portfolio assessment some-times offers students the opportunity to reflect ontheir work as represented in the portfolio and thiscertainly provides self-assessment information tothem. As students have more opportunities to re-flect on their own learning, they will develop moreself-knowledge that can be helpful to them.

ConclusionIn summary, metacognitive knowledge is a new

category of knowledge in the revised Taxonomy.However, given its important role in learning, it is awelcome and much-needed addition. Although there

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are different kinds of metacognitive knowledge,three general types are of particular importance.Strategic knowledge refers to knowledge of strate-gies for learning and thinking. Knowledge of tasksand their contexts represents knowledge about dif-ferent types of cognitive tasks as well as class-room and cultural norms. Finally, self-knowledgeis a critically important component of metacogni-tive knowledge. Because metacognitive knowledgein general is positively linked to student learning,explicitly teaching metacognitive knowledge to fa-cilitate its development is needed. As the revisedTaxonomy emphasizes, the need to align objec-tives, instruction, and assessment requires us toconsider the role that metacognitive knowledgeplays in the classroom.

ReferencesBaker, L., & Cerro, L. (2000). Assessing metacognition

in children and adults. In G. Schraw & J. Impara(Eds.), Issues in the measurement of metacognition(pp. 99-145). Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute of MentalMeasurements.

Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (1999). Howpeople learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school.Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Brown, A., Bransford, J., Ferrara, R., & Campione, J.(1983). Learning, remembering, and understand-ing. In P.H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & J. Flavell & E.Markman (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of child psychol-ogy: Vol. 3. Cognitive development (4th ed., pp.77-166). New York: Wiley.

Flavell, J. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitor-ing: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry.American Psychologist, 34, 906-911.

Hofer, B., Yu, S., & Pintrich, P.R. (1998). Teaching

college students to be self-regulating learners. InD.H. Schunk & B.J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Self-reg-ulated learning: From teaching to self-reflectivepractice (pp. 57-85). New York: Guilford.

Paris, S., Lipson, M., & Wixson, K. (1983). Becominga strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psy-chology, 8, 293-316.

Paris, S., & Winograd, P. (1990). How metacognitioncan promote academic learning and instruction. InB.F. Jones & L. Idol (Eds.), Dimensions of think-ing and cognitive instruction (pp. 15-51). Hills-dale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Pintrich, P.R., McKeachie, W.J., & Lin, Y. (1987).Teaching a course in learning to learn. Teachingof Psychology, 14, 81-86.

Pintrich, P.R., & Schrauben, B. (1992). Students' moti-vational beliefs and their cognitive engagement inclassroom tasks. In D. Schunk & J. Meece (Eds.),Student perceptions in the classroom: Causes andconsequences (pp. 149-183). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Pintrich, P.R., & Schunk, D.H. (2002). Motivation ineducation: Theory, research, and applications.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice-Hall.

Pintrich, P.R., Wolters, C., & Baxter, G. (2000). As-sessing metacognition and self-regulated learning.In G. Schraw & J. Impara (Eds.), Issues in themeasurement of metacognition (pp. 43-97). Lin-coln, NE: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements.

Schneider, W., & Pressley, M. (1997). Memory devel-opment between two and twenty. Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Snow, R., Corno, L., & Jackson, D. (1996). Individualdifferences in affective and cognitive functions.In D. Berliner & R. Calfee (Eds.), Handbook ofEducational Psychology (pp. 243-3 10). New York:Macmillan.

Weinstein, C.E., & Mayer, R. (1986). The teaching oflearning strategies. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Hand-book of research on teaching (pp. 315-327). NewYork: Macmillan.

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Richard E. Mayer

Rote Versus Meaningful Learningi

L EARNING INVOLVES THE ACQUISITION of knowl-L edge. This is a commonsense view of learn-

ing that has implications for how to teach-suchas presenting information to learners in books and

lectures-and how to assess-such as testing to

see how much of the presented material studentscan remember (Mayer, 2001). The revised Taxon-

omy is based on a broader vision of learning that

includes not only acquiring knowledge but also be-

ing able to use knowledge in a variety of new situ-

ations. When taking a knowledge acquisition viewof learning, teachers sometimes emphasize one kind

of cognitive processing in instruction and assess-ment-what we call Remembering. Like the origi-

nal Taxonomy, however, the revised Taxonomy is

based on the idea that schooling can be expandedto include a fuller range of cognitive processes.

The purpose of this article is to describe this fullerrange of processes in more detail.

Two of the most important educational goalsare to promote retention and to promote transfer

(which, when it occurs, indicates meaningful learn-

ing). Retention is the ability to remember materialat some later time in much the same way it waspresented during instruction. Transfer is the abili-

ty to use what was learned to solve new problems,answer new questions, or facilitate learning new

subject matter (Mayer & Wittrock, 1996). In short,

retention requires that students remember what theyhave learned, whereas transfer requires students notonly to remember but also to make sense of and beable to use what they have learned (Bransford,Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Detterman & Sternberg,1993; Haskell, 2001; Mayer, 1995; McKeough,Lupart, & Marini, 1995; Phye, 1997). Stated some-what differently, retention focuses on the past;transfer emphasizes the future. After reading a text-book lesson on Ohm's Law, for example, a reten-tion test might include questions asking studentsto write the formula for Ohm's Law. In contrast, atransfer test might include questions asking stu-dents to rearrange an electrical circuit to maximizethe rate of electron flow or to use Ohm's Law toexplain a complex electric circuit.

Although educational objectives for promot-ing retention are fairly easy to construct, educatorsmay have more difficulty in formulating, teaching,and assessing objectives aimed at promoting trans-fer (Baxter, Elder, & Glaser, 1996; Mayer, 2002;Phye, 1997). The revised Taxonomy is intended to

help broaden the typical set of educational objec-tives to include those aimed at promoting transfer.

A Tale of Three Learning OutcomesAs an introduction, consider three learning

scenarios. The first exemplifies what might be

called no learning, the second, rote learning, andthe third, meaningful learning.

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 41, Number 4, Autumn 2002

Copyright © 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State University

Richard E. Mayer is a professor of psychology and edu-cation at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

MayerRote Versus Meaningful Learning

No learningAmy reads a chapter on electrical circuits in

her science textbook. She skims the material, certainthat the test will be a breeze. When she is asked torecall part of the lesson (as a retention test), she isable to remember very few of the key terms andfacts. For example, she cannot list the major compo-nents in an electrical circuit even though they weredescribed in the chapter. When she is asked to usethe information to solve problems (as part of a trans-fer test), she cannot. For example, she cannot an-swer an essay question that asks her to diagnose aproblem in an electrical circuit. In this worst-casescenario, Amy neither possesses nor is able to usethe relevant knowledge. Amy has neither sufficient-ly attended to nor encoded the material duringlearning. The resulting outcome can be essentiallycharacterized as no learning.

Rote learningBecky reads the same chapter on electrical

circuits. She reads carefully, making sure she readsevery word. She goes over the material, memoriz-ing the key facts. When she is asked to recall thematerial, she can remember almost all of the im-portant terms and facts in the lesson. Unlike Amy,she is able to list the major components in an elec-trical circuit. However, when Becky is asked touse the information to solve problems, she cannot.Like Amy, she cannot answer the essay questionrequiring her to diagnose a problem in an electri-cal circuit. In this scenario, Becky possesses rele-vant knowledge but is unable to use that knowledgeto solve problems. She cannot transfer this knowl-edge to a new situation. Becky has attended torelevant information but has not understood it and,therefore, cannot use it. The resulting learning out-come can be called rote learning.

Meaningful learningCarla reads the same textbook chapter on

electrical circuits. She reads carefully, trying tomake sense out of it. When asked to recall thematerial, she, like Midori, can remember almostall of the important terms and facts in the lesson.Furthermore, when she is asked to use the infor-mation to solve problems, she generates many pos-sible solutions. In this scenario, Carla not only

possesses relevant knowledge, she also can use thatknowledge to solve problems and understand newconcepts. She can transfer her knowledge to newp.roblems and new learning situations. Carla hasaltended to relevant information and has under-stood it. The resulting learning outcome can becalled meaningful learning.

Meaningful learning occurs when studentsbuild the knowledge and cognitive processes neededfor successful problem solving. Problem solving in-volves devising a way of achieving a goal that onehas never previously achieved; that is, figuring outhow to change a situation from its given state intoa goal state (Mayer, 1992). Two major componentsin problem solving are (a) problem representation,in which a student builds a mental representationof the problem, and (b) problem solution, in whicha student devises and carries out a plan for solvingthe problem (Mayer, 1992).

A focus on meaningful learning is consistentwith the view of learning as knowledge construc-tion in which students seek to make sense of theirexperiences. In constructivist learning, studentsengage in active cognitive processing, such as pay-ing attention to relevant incoming information,mentally organizing incoming information into acoherent representation, and mentally integratingincoming information with existing knowledge(Mayer, 1999). In contrast, a focus on rote learn-ing is consistent with the view of learning as knowl-edge acquisition in which students seek to add newinformation to their memories (Mayer, 1999).

Meaningful learning is recognized as an im-portant educational goal. It requires that instructiongo beyond simple presentation of Factual Knowl-edge and that assessment tasks require more of stu-dents than simply recalling or recognizing FactualKr,owledge (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999;Lambert & McCombs, 1998). The cognitive process-es summarized here describe the range of students'cognitive activities in meaningful learning; that is,these processes are ways students can actively en-gage in the process of constructing meaning.

Cognitive Processes forRetention and Transfer

If you are interested mainly in teaching andassessing the degree to which students have learned

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THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Autumn 2002

Revising Bloom's Taxonomy

some subject matter content and retained it over someperiod of time, you would focus primarily on one

class of cognitive processes, namely, those associat-ed with Remember. In contrast, if you wish to ex-

pand your focus by finding ways to foster and assessmeaningful learning, you need to emphasize those

cognitive processes that go beyond remembering.What are some of the cognitive processes used

for retention and transfer? As discussed above, the

revised Taxonomy includes six cognitive process cat-

egories-one most closely related to retention (Re-member) and the other five increasingly related to

transfer (Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and

Create). Based on a review of the illustrative ob-

jectives listed in the original Taxonomy and an

examination of other classification systems, wehave selected 19 specific cognitive processes thatfit within these six categories. These 19 cognitiveprocesses are intended to be mutually exclusive;

together they delineate the breadth and boundariesof the six categories. In the discussion that fol-

lows, each of the six categories, as well as the

cognitive processes that fit within them, are de-fined and exemplified.

RememberWhen the objective of instruction is to pro-

mote retention of the presented material in much

the same form in which it was taught, the relevantprocess category is Remember. Remembering in-

volves retrieving relevant knowledge from long-

term memory. Remembering knowledge is essentialfor meaningful learning and problem solving whenthat knowledge is used in more complex tasks. For

example, knowledge of the correct spelling of com-mon English words appropriate to a given grade lev-el is necessary if a student is to master writing an

essay. When teachers concentrate solely on rote leam-ing, teaching and assessing focus solely on remem-bering elements or fragments of knowledge, often inisolation from any context. When teachers focus on

meaningful learning, however, remembering knowl-edge is integrated within the larger task of con-

structing new knowledge or solving new problems.In other words, when meaningful learning is thegoal, then remembering becomes a means to anend, rather than the end itself. The two associatedcognitive processes are recognizing and recalling.

Recognizing (also called identifying) involves

locating knowledge in long-term memory that isconsistent with presented material. For example, insocial studies, an objective could be "Identify themajor exports of various South American countries."A corresponding test item would be "Which ofthese is a major export of Colombia? (a) bananas,(b) coffee, (c) silk, (d) tea."

Recalling (also called retrieving) involves re-

trieving relevant knowledge from long-term mem-ory. In literature, an objective could be "Recall thepoets who authored various poems." A correspond-ing test question would be "Who wrote The Charge

of the Light Brigade?"

UnderstandAs you can see from the previous section,

when the goal of instruction is to promote reten-tion, the most important cognitive process is Re-member. However, when the goal of instruction isto promote transfer, the focus shifts to the other

five cognitive process categories, Understandthrough Create. Of these, arguably the largest cat-egory of transfer-based educational objectives em-phasized in schools and colleges is Understand.Students are said to understand when they are ableto construct meaning from instructional messages-including oral, written, and graphic communica-tions, and material presented during lectures, in books,or on computer monitors. Examples of potential in-structional messages are an in-class physics dem-onstration, a geological formation viewed on a fieldtrip, a computer simulation of a trip through an artmuseum, or a musical work played by an orches-tra, as well as numerous verbal, pictorial, and sym-bolic representations on paper.

Students understand when they build connec-tions between the new knowledge to be gained andtheir prior knowledge. More specifically, the in-coming knowledge is integrated with existing sche-mas and cognitive frameworks. Cognitive processesin the category of Understand include interpreting,

exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring,

comparing, and explaining.

Interpreting (also called clarifying, para-

phrasing, representing, or translating) occurs when

a student is able to convert information from oneform of representation to another. In mathematics,

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for example, a sample objective could be "Learnto translate number sentences expressed in wordsinto algebraic equations expressed in symbols." Acorresponding assessment item involves asking stu-dents to write an equation (using B for the numberof boys and G for the number of girls) that corre-sponds to the statement, "There are twice as manyboys as girls in this class."

Exemplifying (also called illustrating or in-stantiating) occurs when a student finds a specificexample or instance of a general concept or princi-ple. In art history, an objective might be "Learn toidentify various artistic painting styles." A corre-sponding assessment involves asking students tofind a new example of the impressionist style (withnew meaning an example not included in the text-book or used in class).

Classifying (also called categorizing or sub-suming) occurs when a student determines thatsomething (e.g., a particular instance or example)belongs to a certain category (e.g., concept or prin-ciple). In social studies, an objective may be "Learnto classify observed or described cases of mentaldisorders." A corresponding assessment item is toask students to observe a video of the behavior ofa mental patient and then indicate the mental dis-order that is being displayed.

Summarizing (also called abstracting or gen-eralizing) occurs when a student produces a shortstatement that represents presented information orabstracts a general theme. The length of the summa-ry depends to a certain extent on the length of thepresented material. For example, a sample objectivein history could be "Learn to write summaries ofevents portrayed pictorially." A corresponding as-sessment item involves asking students to watch avideotape about the French Revolution and thenwrite a cohesive summary.

Inferring (also called concluding, extrapolat-ing, interpolating, or predicting) involves drawing alogical conclusion from presented information. Forexample, in learning Spanish as a second language, asample objective could be "Students will be able toinfer grammatical principles from examples." To as-sess this objective a student may be given the article-noun pairs, "la casa, el muchacho, la senorita, el pero,"and asked to formulate a principle for when to usethe article la and when to use the article el.

Comparing (also called contrasting, mapping,or matching) involves detecting similarities anddifferences between two or more objects, events,icleas, problems, or situations. In the field of socialstudies, for example, an objective may be "Under-stand historical events by comparing them to fa-niiliar situations." A corresponding assessmentquestion is "How is the American Revolution likea family fight or an argument between friends?"

Explaining (also called constructing models)occurs when a student mentally constructs and usesa cause-and-effect model of a system or series. Innatural science, an objective could be "Explainobserved phenomena in terms of basic physicslaws." Corresponding assessments involve askingstudents who have studied Ohm's Law to explainwhat happens to the rate of the current when asecond battery is added to a circuit, or asking stu-dents who have viewed a video on lightning stormsto explain how differences in temperature are in-volved in the formation of lightning.

ApplyApply involves using procedures to perform

exercises or solve problems and is closely linkedwith Procedural Knowledge. The Apply categoryconsists of two cognitive processes: executing-when the task is an exercise (i.e., familiar to thelearner), and implementing-when the task is aproblem (i.e., unfamiliar to the learner).

Executing (also called carrying out) occurswhen a student applies a procedure to a familiartask. For example, a sample objective in elementa-ry level mathematics could be "Learn to divideone whole number by another, both with multipledigits." To assess the objective, a student may begiven a worksheet containing 15 whole numberdivision exercises (e.g., 784/15) and asked to findtheir quotients.

Implementing (also called using) occurs whena student applies one or more procedures to anunfamiliar task. In natural science, a sample ob-jective might be "Learn to use the most effective,efficient, and affordable method of conducting aresearch study to address a specific research ques-tion." A corresponding assessment is to give studentsa research question and have them propose a researchstudy that meets specified criteria of effectiveness,

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efficiency, and affordability. Notice that in thisassessment task, students must not only apply aprocedure (i.e., engage in implementing) but alsorely on conceptual understanding of the problem andprocedure. Thus, unlike executing, which relies al-most exclusively on cognitive processes associatedwith Apply, implementing involves cognitive processesassociated with both Understand and Apply.

AnalyzeAnalyze involves breaking material into its

constituent parts and determining how the partsare related to each other and to an overall struc-ture. This category includes the cognitive process-es of differentiating, organizing, and attributing.

Therefore, objectives classified as Analyze includelearning to determine the relevant or importantpieces of a message (differentiating), the ways inwhich the pieces of a message are configured (or-

ganizing), and the underlying purpose of the mes-sage (attributing). Although learning to Analyze

may be viewed as an end in itself, it is probablymore defensible educationally to consider analysisas an extension of Understanding or as a preludeto Evaluating or Creating.

Improving students' skills in analyzing educa-tional communications can be found as a goal in manyfields of study. Teachers of science, social studies,the humanities, and the arts frequently express "learn-ing to analyze" as one of their important objectives.They may, for example, wish to develop in their stu-dents the ability to (a) connect conclusions with sup-porting statements; (b) distinguish relevant fromextraneous material; (c) determine how ideas are con-nected to one another; (d) ascertain the unstated as-sumptions involved in what is said; (e) distinguishdominant from subordinate ideas or themes in poetryor music; and (f) find evidence in support of an au-thor's purposes for writing an essay.

Differentiating (also called discriminating,

selecting, distinguishing, orfocusing) occurs when astudent discriminates relevant from irrelevant partsor important from unimportant parts of presentedmaterial. In mathematics, an objective could be "Dis-tinguish between relevant and irrelevant numbers ina word problem." An assessment item could requirethat students circle the relevant numbers and crossout the irrelevant numbers in a word problem.

Organizing (also called finding coherence, in-

tegrating, outlining, parsing, or structuring) involvesdetermining how elements fit or function within astructure. An objective in social studies could be"Learn to structure a historical description into evi-dence for and against a particular explanation." In acorresponding assessment students could be asked toprepare an outline showing which facts in a passageon American history support and which facts do notsupport the conclusion that the American Civil Warwas caused by differences in the rural and urban com-position of the North and the South.

Attributing (also called deconstructing) occurswhen a student is able to determine the point of view,biases, values, or intent underlying presented materi-al. For example, in social studies, a sample objectivecould be "Learn to determine the point of view of theauthor of an essay on a controversial topic in termsof his or her theoretical perspective." A correspond-ing assessment task could ask students whether a re-port on Amazon rain forests was written from apro-environment or pro-business point of view. Acorresponding assessment in the natural sciencescould be to ask a student to determine whether abehaviorist or a cognitive psychologist wrote anessay about human learning.

EvaluateEvaluate is defined as making judgments based

on criteria and standards. The criteria most often usedare quality, effectiveness, efficiency, and consisten-cy. They may be determined by the student or givento the student by others. The standards may be eitherquantitative (i.e., is this a sufficient amount?) or qual-itative (i.e., is this good enough?). This category in-cludes the cognitive processes of checking (whichrefers to judgments about internal consistency) andcritiquing (which refers to judgments based on exter-nal criteria).

Checking (also called coordinating, detect-ing, monitoring, or testing) occurs when a studentdetects inconsistencies or fallacies within a processor product, determines whether a process or producthas internal consistency, or detects the effectivenessof a procedure as it is being implemented. Whencombined with planning (a cognitive process in thecategory, Create) and implementing (a cognitiveprocess in the category, Apply), checking involves

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determining how well the plan is working. A sam-ple objective in social science could be "Learn todetect inconsistencies within persuasive messag-es." A corresponding assessment task could involveasking students to listen to a television advertise-ment for a political candidate and point out anylogical flaws in the persuasive message. A sampleobjective in science could be "Learn to determinewhether a scientist's conclusion follows from theobserved data." An assessment task could involveasking students to read a report of a chemistry ex-periment in order to determine whether the con-clusion follows from the results of the experiment.

Critiquing (also called judging) occurs when astudent detects inconsistencies between a product oroperation and some external criteria, determineswhether a product has extemal consistency, or judg-es the appropriateness of a procedure for a givenprob]em. Critiquing lies at the core of what has beencalled critical thinking. In critiquing, students judgethe merits of a product or operation based on speci-fied or student-determined criteria and standards. Insocial science, an objective could be "Learn to eval-uate a proposed solution (e.g., eliminate all grading)to a social problem (e.g., how to improve K-12 edu-cation) in terms of its likely effectiveness."

CreateCreate involves putting elements together to

form a coherent or functional whole; that is, reor-ganizing elements into a new pattern or structure.Objectives classified as Create involve having stu-dents produce an original product. Composition (in-cluding writing), for example, often, but not always,involves cognitive processes associated with Cre-ate. It can, in fact, be simply the application ofprocedural knowledge (e.g., "Write this essay inthis way"). The creative process can be broken intothree phases: (a) problem representation, in whicha student attempts to understand the task and gen-erate possible solutions; (b) solution planning, inwhich a student examines the possibilities and de-vises a workable plan; and (c) solution execution,in which a student successfully carries out the plan.Thus, the creative process can be thought of asstarting with a divergent phase in which a varietyof possible solutions are considered as the studentattempts to understand the task (generating). This

is followed by a convergent phase, in which a so-lution method is devised and turned into a plan ofaction (planning). Finally, the plan is executed asthe solution is constructed (producing). Not sur-prisingly, then, Create can be broken down intothree cognitive processes: generating, planning, andproducing.

Generating (also called hypothesizing) in-volves inventing alternative hypotheses based oncriteria. When generating transcends the bound-aries or constraints of prior knowledge and exist-ing theories, it involves divergent thinking andforms the core of what can be called creative think-ing. In generating, a student is given a descriptionof a problem and must produce alternative solu-tions. For example, in social science, an objectivecould be "Learn to generate multiple potentiallyuseful solutions for social problems." A correspond-ing assessment item could ask students to suggestas many ways as possible to assure that everyonehas adequate medical insurance. An objective fromthe field of mathematics could be "Generate alter-native methods for achieving a particular end re-suilt." A corresponding assessment could be to askstudents to list alternative methods they could usetc find which whole numbers yield 60 when multi-plied together. For each of these assessments, ex-p]icit scoring criteria are needed.

Planning (also called designing) involves de-vising a method for accomplishing some task. How-ever, planning stops short of carrying out the stepsto create the actual solution for a given problem.In planning, a student may establish subgoals (i.e.,break a task into subtasks to be performed whensclving the problem). Teachers often skip statingplanning objectives, instead stating their objectivesin terms of producing, the final stage of the creativeprocess. When this happens, planning is either as-sumed or is implicit in the producing objective. Inthis case, planning is likely to be carried out byth.w student covertly, in the course of constructinga product (i.e., producing). In planning, a studentdevelops a solution method when given a problemstatement. In mathematics, an objective could be"List the steps needed to solve geometry problems."An assessment task may ask students to devise aplan for determining the volume of the frustum ofa pyramid (a task not previously considered in

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class). The plan may involve computing the volume

of a large pyramid, then computing the volume of a

small pyramid, and, finally, subtracting the smaller

from the larger.Producing (also called constructing) involves

inventing a product. In producing, a student is given

a functional description of a goal and must create a

product that satisfies the description. In science, for

example, an objective might be "Learn to design hab-

itats for certain species and certain purposes." A cor-

responding assessment task may ask students to design

the living quarters of a space station.

ConclusionThe primary goal of this article has been to

examine how teaching and assessing can be broad-

ened beyond an exclusive focus on the cognitive

process of Remember. The revised Taxonomy con-

tains descriptions of 19 specific cognitive process-

es associated with six process categories. Two of

these cognitive processes are associated with Re-

member; 17 are associated with the five more com-

plex cognitive process categories: Understand,

Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.

Our analysis has implications for teaching and

assessing. On the teaching side, two of the cognitive

processes help to promote retention of learning,

whereas 17 of them help foster transfer of learning.

Thus, when the goal of instruction is to promote trans-

fer, objectives should include the cognitive processes

associated with Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evalu-

ate, and Create. The descriptions in this chapter are

intended to help educators generate a more complete

range of educational objectives that are likely to re-

sult in both retention and transfer.

On the assessment side, our analysis of cog-

nitive processes is intended to help educators (in-

cluding test designers) broaden the way they assess

learning. When the goal of instruction is to pro-

mote transfer, assessment tasks should involve cog-

nitive processes that go beyond recognizing and

recalling. Although assessment tasks that use these

two cognitive processes have a place in assess-

ment, these tasks can, and often should, be sup-

plemented with those that utilize the full range of

cognitive processes required for transfer of learning.

NoteI. This article is based on Chapter 5, The Cognitive

Process Dimension in A Taxonomy for Learning,Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom'sTaxonomy of Educational Objectives (Anderson,Krathwohl, et al., 2001) and is reproduced by per-mission of the publisher. I am pleased to acknowl-edge that the following authors contributed to thisarticle: Lorin W. Anderson, David R. Krathwohl,Paul Printrich, and Merlin Wittrock. I also grateful-ly acknowledge the assistance of the entire team ofTaxonomy authors.

ReferencesBaxter, G.P., Elder, A.D., & Glaser, R. (1996). Knowl-

edge-based cognition and performance assessmentin the science classroom. Educational Psycholo-gist, 31, 133-140.

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R. (1999).How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, andschool. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Detterman, D.K., & Sternberg, R.J. (Eds.). (1993).Transfer on trial: Intelligence, cognition, and in-struction. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Haskell, R.E. (2001). Transfer of learning. San Diego:Academic Press.

Lambert, N.M., & McCombs, B.L. (Eds.). (1998). Howstudents learn. Washington, DC: American Psy-chological Association.

Mayer, R.E. (1992). Thinking, problem solving, cogni-tion (2nd ed.). New York: Freeman.

Mayer, R.E. (1995). Teaching and testing for problemsolving. In L.W. Anderson (Ed.), Internationalencyclopedia of teaching and teacher education(2nd ed., pp. 4728-4731). Oxford, UK: Pergamon.

Mayer, R.E. (1999). The promise of educational psy-chology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Mayer, R.E. (2001). Changing conceptions of learn-ing: A century of progress in the scientific studyof learning. In L. Corno (Ed.), Education acrossthe century: The centennial volume-One hun-dredth yearbook of the National Society for theStudy of Education (pp. 34-75). Chicago: NationalSociety for the Study of Education.

Mayer, R.E. (2002). Teaching for meaningful learn-ing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Mayer, R.E., & Wittrock, M.C. (1996). Problem-solv-ing transfer. In D.C. Berliner & R.C. Calfee (Eds.),Handbook of educational psychology (pp. 47-62).New York: Macmillan.

McKeough, A., Lupart, J., & Martini, A. (Eds.). (1995).Teaching for transfer. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Phye, G.D. (Ed.). (1997). Handbook of classroom as-sessment. San Diego: Academic Press.

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James Raths

Improving Instruction

W HILE PRESERVICE TEACHER education pro-grams often focus almost exclusively on

preparing teacher candidates to cope with the chal-lenges faced during their first year in the class-room, many master's-level programs for teachersemphasize improving instruction. Teachers whoenroll in such programs are encouraged to acceptthe reasonable assumption that all teachers, includ-ing the professors in the program, are not perfectin their practice, and that all can improve. Someprograms, such as the Master of Instruction pro-gram at the University of Delaware, require candi-dates to write personal goals having to do withimproving their instruction as a consideration atthe admissions point into the program. This em-phasis certainly begs the question: What counts asimproved instruction? Stated somewhat different-ly, if instruction were improved, how would weknow it?

What Counts as Improved Instruction?One answer to this question is reflected in

the Carroll (1963) model of school learning.' Thismodel posits that student learning is dependent ontwo variables: the amount of time a student spendslearning a task and the amount of time a studentneeds to spend on the task in order to learn ormaster it. Thus, the amount of learning varies di-

James Raths is a professor of education at the Universityof Delaware.

rectly with the first variable (time on task) andinversely with the second (time needed to learn).This formula can be written in shorthand form asfollows:

Learning = Time on task/Time needed to learn

Carroll's model, so simple and obvious,spawned a great deal of research in the decadesafter his essay was published. Within the contextof the Carroll model, the following can be taken asevidence that instruction has improved:

1.If the amount of learning that takes place in aclass increases, all things being equal, then onemight reasonably infer that instruction has im-proved.

2. If students increase their time on task within alesson or a unit of study, all things being equal,then one might reasonably infer that instructionhas improved.

3. If the time students need to learn the objectivesof the lesson or unit is reduced because of teach-er interventions (e.g., scaffolding), all thingsbeing equal, then one might reasonably infer thatinstruction has improved.

4. If the complexity of the objectives addressedincreases across lessons or units, all things be-ing equal, then one might infer that instructionhas improved.

5. If the activities assigned to students and the as-sessments given to students are more closely

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 41, Number 4, Autumn 2002Copyright C) 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State Univetsity


aligned with a lesson's or unit's objectives, allthings being equal, then one might reasonablyinfer that instruction has improved.

Certainly there may be other ways for im-proving instruction. Examples would include en-gaging students in increasingly more worthwhileeducational experiences; increasing the dispositionsof the teacher to convey caring attitudes towardstudents; linking the topics and objectives of oneunit with those of others within the curriculum;and matching instructional activities to learner char-acteristics (such as cognitive styles). Of course,the Carroll model is so encompassing that eventhese alternatives can be easily subsumed by thevariables within it. Being more caring, for exam-ple, could help increase students' time on task.Similarly, providing students with more worthwhileeducational experiences could increase students'motivation. Finally, matching instructional activi-ties to students' cognitive styles might reduce theamount of time students need to meet the lesson orunit objectives. The point here is that the Carrollmodel is only one way to derive conceptions ofwhat counts as instructional improvement.

How Does the Revised Taxonomy Help?There are at least two ways the revised Tax-

onomy can help teachers who are interested in im-proving their instruction and who adopt the Carrollmodel and the inferences derived from it as de-scribed above. The first is to align activities andassessments with objectives. The second is to raisethe learning targets themselves.

Aligning objectives, activities, and assessmentsAs we met to plan and carry out our work on

the revised Taxonomy, we soon accepted BenjaminBloom's assessment that very few people actuallyread the book in which the original Taxonomy ap-peared. Instead, they read about the categories ofthe original Taxonomy in secondary sources, suchas methods texts or assessment texts, where theframework is reproduced. We wanted our revisionto be read. There was a consensus among us thatby including annotated descriptions of teaching tohighlight the general propositions found in the re-vised Taxonomy, we could increase the likelihoodthat the book would be read. Shortly thereafter, we

set about to collect appropriate descriptions ofteaching. We were not seeking descriptions of ex-cellent teaching or descriptions authored by teach-ers who were considered "master teachers" or"national board certified teachers" (although ourteachers may well fit into these categories). Rath-er, we wanted teachers whose descriptions of theireveryday teaching could be used to clarify the cate-gories and classifications of the revised Taxonomy.

As we collected the drafts of the vignettes,we found two interesting phenomena. First, asteachers cited their unit's goals, they wrote downactivities, not objectives. For example, for a unitcombining the Parliamentary Acts (ca. 1770) withpersuasive writing, Ms. Gwen Airasian, a fifthgrade teacher, wrote as one of her goals "Studentswill write persuasive editorials stating their opin-ions about the Parliamentary Acts." We presumedthat the actual objective of the unit would be re-flected in her answer to the question "What do youwant students to learn as a result of writing theseeditorials?" In short, her real objective is moretacit than explicit. It became apparent to us thatimplicit objectives make the assessment phase ofteaching more difficult.

A second phenomenon we observed in thevignettes (and one typically related to the first)was a misalignment within the planning and deliv-ery of the unit between the unit objectives, theinstructional activities, and/or the ways in whichteachers assessed student learning. Ms. MargaretJackson's teaching vignette concerning Macbeth il-lustrates this situation. Our analysis found that "al-though most of the instructional activities emphasizeConceptual Knowledge, they differ in the cognitiveprocesses they demand from students. In many casesthese demands are beyond Understanding, which isthe target of the second objective" (Anderson, Krath-wohl, et al., 2001, p. 149). Similarly, despite thisemphasis on Conceptual Knowledge, Ms. Jackson feltcompelled to administer a traditional Factual Knowl-

edge unit test because of district grading requirements.The preceding observations have two lessons

for potential users of the revised Taxonomy. First,it is critically important to distinguish betweenobjectives and activities. Without this distinction,it is difficult to know what precisely is to be as-sessed at the end of the unit and how instructional

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RathsImproving Instruction

activities and assessment tasks are distinct, yet com-plementary. Second, it is important to align in-structional activities and assessment tasks withobjectives, whether they are implicit or explicit.Only with proper alignment, is the efficacy of in-struction likely to be optimized.

Teachers interested in improving their instruc-tion can use the Taxonomy Table (which is repro-duced on the inside front cover of the revisedTaxonomy) to review their plans to assure that theirobjectives, activities, and assessments are properlyaligned. Suppose a teacher holds as an objectivethat students will learn to rigorously apply staterubrics to their own writing samples. He or shewill need to plan the instruction so students havethe opportunity to do this. The instructional activitiesmight be organized in a way to scaffold the learningprocess. For example, the rubrics can be applied topieces of writing the teacher has selected to illus-trate various dimensions of the rubric. Or studentscan be assigned the responsibility of applying onlyone dimension of the rubric at a time until all ofthe dimensions have been understood. To the ex-tent this is done, the activities are more likely tobe aligned with the stated objective.

Furthermore, if a teacher wants to assess theextent to which students have acquired the objec-tive, he or she will need to have ways of assessingthe rigor with which students apply state rubrics totheir own writing samples. When this is done, thealignment puzzle becomes complete; that is, bothactivities and assessments are aligned with objec-tives. And, as the Carroll model suggests, wheninstruction is aligned with the objectives, studentswill need to spend less time learning the objective.Thus, all things being equal, instruction will haveimproved.

Raising learning targetsOne inference that can be derived from the

Carroll model is that the learning target itself canbe raised. It is on this particular point that therevised Taxonomy can be of assistance to teach-ers. In combination, the vignettes contain exam-ples of the range of objectives that can be pursuedin schools and classrooms. In the previously men-tioned Macbeth vignette, Ms. Jackson had two ob-jectives. The first was for her students to remember

important details about the play, (e.g., specificevents, characters, and their relationships). In con-trast, the second objective was for students to un-derstand the meaning and significance of classicalliterature in their own lives. It is not that remem-bering things is not important (see Mayer, this is-sue). It is that remembering things is not sufficientfor being a truly educated person-a person whocan use what he or she has learned previously tolearn new things and to solve a variety of academ-ic and nonacademic problems.

In this regard, the revised Taxonomy givesus two ways in which the learning target can beraised. The first is to focus on increasingly morecomplex cognitive processes, particularly Analyze,Evaluate, and Create. For example, rather thanbeing satisfied with being able to remember or un-derstand "tourists," "migrants," and "immigrants"as individual concepts, teachers may considerwhether students should learn to

* analyze concepts such as these in a larger con-text (e.g., rights and obligations of nonresidentsor noncitizens);

* evaluate proposals for dealing with a variety ofsocial problems (e.g., illegal immigrants or un-schooled migrants); or

* create policies that solve specific social problemswithout causing other problems (e.g., dealingwith immigrants without negatively impacting ontourism).

A second way the learning target can beraised is to move beyond the three traditional aca-demic types of knowledge (e.g., factual, conceptu-al, and procedural) and consider objectives thaternphasize metacognitive knowledge (see Pintrich,this issue). One of the primary benefits of meta-ccgnitive knowledge is that it "connects" studentsto academic learning. That is, armed with meta-cognitive knowledge, students can see how aca-demic learning relates to them and how they, inturn, relate to academic learning. Through meta-cognitive knowledge, they gain knowledge of strat-egies they can use to learn science, mathematics,foreign language, etc. They gain knowledge of sub-jects in which they are and are not interested.

Regardless of how this issue is addressed,one implication of the Carroll model is that as

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teachers are able to raise the learning target of aparticular lesson or unit, it can be argued that in-struction has improved.

The Paradox of Simplicity VersusComplexity in Improving Instruction

There is a sense, akin to one of Murphy'sLaws, that "nothing is simple." As we preparedthe revised Taxonomy, the principles that emergedconcerning the importance of distinguishing ob-jectives from activities; aligning objectives, activ-ities, and assessments; and raising the learningtarget by introducing more complex objectives areall logical, simple, and supported by a good dealof common sense. At the same time, they are some-what problematic. Our collective experiences inpreparing the revised Taxonomy (especially ouranalysis of the vignettes) caused us to stop andreflect on enduring classroom problems and theircontributions to "complexifying" these principalideas (see Anderson, Krathwohl, et al., 2001, chap.14). In this section I would like to discuss a few ofthe issues that may cause one to pause when con-sidering the ideas presented in this article.

The conflation of activities and objectivesMany teachers, including excellent ones, of-

ten conceive of their objectives as activities stu-dents are invited to complete during an instructionalunit. One purpose of a unit on the American CivilWar, for example, might be "Compare the resourc-es of the North and the South prior to the outbreakof hostilities." Is this an objective or an activity?In my earlier discussion of Ms. Airasian's unit onthe Parliamentary Acts, we classified a similar ob-jective as an activity, and advanced our belief thatto use the revised Taxonomy effectively, teachersshould distinguish between objectives and activi-ties. We learned, however, that this issue is morecomplex than we initially believed.

The conflation, or blending, of objectives andactivities can be explained in part by teachers' be-liefs, based on their experiences, in the education-al value of particular activities. For example, theteacher of the Civil War unit may have learnedthat by conducting a comparison of prewar resourc-es of the North and South in 1860, students ac-quire factual knowledge about the Civil War, gain

conceptual understanding of war and resources, andlearn how to make comparisons in general. For thisteacher, the activity statement may be a "shortcut"method of describing what is going on in class. Thisobjective, while clear to the teacher, is implicit.

A second explanation for the conflation ofobjectives and activities is associated with the cur-rent push toward performance assessment (Wig-gins, 1993). It is, in effect, mistaking the objectivewith its indicator. Teachers strive to have their stu-dents do well on a performance task. So, for ex-ample, writing an editorial, a task used to assessstudents' understanding, is tranformed into the les-son objective.

The conflation of objectives and activities isseen as problematic to some supervisors and eval-uators who expect teachers to make distinctionsbetween their objectives and their activities (Popham,1973). Some teachers write very specific behavioralobjectives to accommodate the expectations of theiradministrators. Although this approach helps clarifythe distinction between objectives and activities, italso tends to narrow the richness of the activities inwhich students are engaged.

Assumptions about the learning targetResearchers interested in studying teaching

and administrators interested in evaluating teach-ing like to think they are able to gauge the cogni-tive challenge that particular assignments offerstudents. My application of the Carroll model islargely based on the assumption, made sometimesby teachers and often by evaluators, that if stu-dents are addressing an objective or are engagedin a task at the high end of the revised Taxonomy,they are being cognitively challenged. However,the "push-down principle," proposed by Merrill(1971), raises questions about the validity of thisassumption.

The push-down principle indicates that com-plex tasks become simpler and more automatic withhabit. In essence, it presupposes that students ad-dressing complex, challenging problems seek waysto reduce the complexity and minimize the chal-lenge. Suppose, for example, a student encountersa novel problem. Initially, she selects approachesor constructs strategies until she finds one thatsolves it. Subsequently, when she faces a similar

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RathsImproving Instruction

problem, one classified as similar in cognitive chal-lenge to the first, the tendency is to use the samestrategy or approach used the last time, thus di-minishing the cognitive challenge of the problem.As Merrill (1971) pointed out, "Learners have aninnate tendency to reduce the cognitive load asmuch as possible; consequently a learner will at-tempt to perform a given response at the lowestpossible level" (p. 38). This is problematic for anobserver watching students address a problem ofapparently significant cognitive challenge who isunaware that students are actually working at low-er cognitive levels. This problem is the major rea-son that we classify intended learning (i.e.,objectives) rather than actual learning in the Tax-onomy Table. Suffice it to say that as teachersattempt to improve their instruction by raising theirtargets, students may be working equally hard to"push down" the targets. Again, teaching is a com-plicated business.

ConclusionWith an eye on improving instruction, I have

suggested at least two ways in which teachers mightuse the revised Taxonomy. The first is to properlyalign objectives, activities, and assessments. Thesecond is to raise the learning targets in terms ofcognitive complexity, type of knowledge (particu-larly metacognitive knowledge), or both. Whileboth of these suggestions seem reasonable-almost

common sense-they are not so easy to implement.Somewhat paradoxically, the conflation of objec-tives, activities, and assessment tasks makes it dif-ficult to properly align objectives, activities, andassessments. In addition, the best intentions maynot result in expected learning, particularly of morecDmplex objectives. Nonetheless, the revised Tax-onomy helps us understand these potential prob-lems and begin to resolve them.

Note1 My colleague, Frank B. Murray of the University of

Delaware, first pointed out to me the potential ofCarroll's formulation in this context. Of course, heis not responsible for my treatment of his originalsuggestion.


P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R.,Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy forlearning, teaching, and assessing: A revision ofBloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives(Complete edition). New York: Longman.

Carroll, J.B. (1963). A model of school learning. Teach-ers College Record, 64, 723-733.

Merrill, M.D. (1971, August). Necessary psychologi-cal conditions for defining instructional outcomes.Educational Technology, 34-39.

Popham, W.J. (1973). Evaluating instruction. Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Wiggins, G.P. (1993). Assessing student performance.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

nP

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Chris Ferguson

Using the Revised Taxonomy to Planand Deliver Team-Taught, Integrated,Thematic Units

A s IF PLANNING A FAIRLY TRADITIONAL subject-oriented class, taught by a single teacher, is

not challenging enough, the challenge increases great-ly when planning interdisciplinary units to be taughtby two teachers. Based on my experience, this chal-lenge is reduced to a large extent when both teachersunderstand the structure of the Taxonomy Table anduse the language of the revised Taxonomy.

An Integrated ClassroomDuring the 2000-2001 school year, a colleague

and I implemented an integrated English and historycourse entitled "Western Culture." The course wasbased on the South Carolina state standards for En-glish IT (sophomore English) and Western Civiliza-tion (a social studies elective). Our 100 sophomores(divided into three sections of about 33 students each)had their English II and Western Civilization classesscheduled in back-to-back 50-minute class periodswith a short break in between. In simplest terms,then, we taught three 100-minute blocks per day.

The majority of the students in the first blockwere students with special needs. Consequently, atrained special needs teacher assisted in the in-struction. In the other two blocks, students weregrouped heterogeneously, differing widely in aca-demic ability and motivation.

The school we worked in was a charterschool, which provided a bit more flexibility forteachers and students alike. Nonetheless, we wereresponsible for teaching state standards. The stu-dents in our classes were as diverse in terms ofethnicity and socioeconomic status as any otherpublic school in our district. Approximately 28%of our students were minorities; about 10% wouldqualify for a gifted and talented program on thebasis of their standardized test scores.

Integrating Subject AreasMy colleague and I were aware that much of

what we taught in our English II and Western Civ-ilization classes overlapped. In fact, in the past wehad collaborated on short curriculum units where asingle essay or research paper would count for bothcourses. One of the reasons for moving to a com-pletely integrated course was to help our studentsbecome better thinkers and writers. Although weunderstood the role of what we referred to as con-tent and skills in both of our courses, the connec-tions between the two courses became clearer aswe became familiar with the Taxonomy Table.

The knowledge and cognitive process dimen-sions enabled us to more clearly focus and explainour course integration. South Carolina's English IIStandards are divided into five general areas, orstrands: reading, writing, research, listening, andspeaking. We took from the revised Taxonomy the


Copyright (D 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State University

Chris Ferguson is a teacher at the Hickory TavernMiddle School in Laurens, SC.

FergusonThe Revised Taxonomy and Thematic Units

perception that initial learning in several of theseareas-particularly writing, research, and speak-ing-often takes the form of applying proceduralknowledge. In other words, there is a sequence ofsteps students must learn and use to engage suc-cessfully in basic writing, research, and speaking.Once this procedural knowledge has been mastered,students can move on to analyzing, evaluating, oreven creating [based on] factual, conceptual knowl-edge, and even metacognitive knowledge.

South Carolina's Social Studies Standards (in-cluding those for Western Civilization) contain largeamounts of factual and conceptual knowledge at theoutset. In fact, remembering factual knowledge andunderstanding conceptual knowledge are the two mostdominant categories of the South Carolina SocialStudies Standards. Interestingly, therefore, when stu-dents are expected to employ more complex cogni-tive processes in social studies, they almost alwaysneed skills in written or oral expression.

Thus, we came to the realization that West-ern Civilization and English II courses are bestcombined when teachers are able to focus on thefactual and conceptual knowledge of history and,at the same time, develop the procedural knowl-edge of English. Furthermore, once students havemastered the procedural knowledge of writing andspeaking, they have a basis for analyzing, evaluat-ing, and creating knowledge from both subject ar-eas simultaneously. This, in fact, was the overallgoal of our Western Culture class.

Planning the Unit:Specifying the Objectives

One of the more interesting thematic unitswe designed and implemented late in the schoolyear focused on the French Revolution. Studentsread the Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities andstudied the historical content of the French Revo-lution. In addition to enhancing their understand-ing of historical fiction, students were able to usetheir content knowledge later to complete someassessments that were both enjoyable and cogni-tively challenging.

Working together, my colleague and I creat-ed separate objectives for Western Civilization andEnglish II for the French Revolution Unit. ForWestern Civilization, students were expected to

WC 1. Understand and be able to explain thecauses of the French Revolution;

WC2. Remember the major characters, events,and dates related to the French Revolu-tion; and

WC3. Compare the three phases of the FrenchRevolution.

For English II, students were expected to

El. Understand the meaning of the terms serialwriting, historicalfiction, and novel;

E2. Understand literary elements (specifically,character, plot, and setting) and literary de-vices (e.g., foreshadowing and personificationas used in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities);

E3. Use a variety of writing forms (e.g., descrip-tive, expository, persuasive) and structures(e.g., letters, outlines, essays) depending onthe writing purpose;

E4. Be able to make and evaluate oral presenta-tions, according to prespecified criteria.

As we began planning the integrated unit, we placedthese seven objectives in the Taxonomy Table asshown in Table 1.

The reasoning for the placement of the ob-jectives in the Taxonomy Table is fairly obvious.Note, however, that two of the objectives wereplaced in multiple cells. Objective E3 requires stu-dents to understand various writing forms, struc-tures, and purposes (conceptual knowledge), as wellas write in accordance with a suggested set of teach-er-given procedures (procedural knowledge). Sim-ilarly, Objective E4 involves both making ande-valuating oral presentations. Making presentationsis a creative act; evaluating them is, of course, anevaluative act. The reason conceptual knowledgewas chosen is because the criteria (i.e., categories)were given to the students.

Planning the Unit: Determiningthe Instructional Activities

Over the course of the school year, my col-league and I discovered that because projects active-ly involve students, they are the most effective wayof maximizing student participation and learning.However, traditional teaching methods-such aslecture, discussions, and textbook assignments-

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Table 1An Analysis of the Unit Objectives in Terms of the Taxonomy Table


The Knowledge 1. Remember 2. Understand 3. Apply 4. Analyze 5. Evaluate 6. Create

DimensionA. Factual WC2

Knowledge

B. Conceptual WCI E4 E4

Knowledge WC3ElE2E3



Key

WC 1. Understand and be able to explain the causes of the French Revolution.

WC2. Remember the major characters, events, and dates related to the French Revolution.

WC3. Compare the three phases of the French Revolution.El. Understand the meaning of the terms serial writing, historical fiction, and novel.

E2. Understand literary elements (specifically, character, plot, and setting) and literary devices (e.g., foreshad-owing and personification).

E3. Use a variety of writing forms (e.g., descriptive, expository, and persuasive) and structures (e.g., letters,outlines, or essays) depending on writing purpose.

E4. Be able to make and evaluate oral presentations, in accordance with prespecified criteria.

are necessary to introduce students to the factualand conceptual knowledge they'll need to completethe projects. Specifically, this factual and concep-tual knowledge enables students to work togetherand use more complex cognitive processes whileworking on their projects. Therefore, the initial in-

structional activities for the first eight days of thisunit resembled a traditional classroom setting, in-cluding very familiar forms of instruction.

Days 1-8During his initial lecture, Mr. Gillespie, the En-

glish instructor, reviewed the concepts that would be

used by students throughout their reading of A Taleof Two Cities (Objectives El and E2). During this

period, large blocks of time were devoted to readingboth the novel and the chapter in the history text onthe French Revolution. To facilitate reading the nov-el, Mr. Gillespie divided it into sections, as if stu-dents were "watching" an old-fashioned serial. Aftereach installment, students, working in groups of

three, were responsible for summarizing the plot ofA Tale of Two Cities, identifying new characters or

settings, and continuing to develop familiar charac-ters and settings. As they read the corresponding chap-ter in the history textbook, students were expected totake notes about characters, events, and dates (Ob-jective WC2). The discussions in the textbook fo-cused on the causes and phases of the FrenchRevolution (Objectives WCI and WC3).

By the end of the eighth day, students wereexpected to have completed reading the novel andthe textbook chapter, and written a complex set ofnotes.

Days 9-14Students, working in groups of four, were as-

signed a historical or fictional character to prosecute

or defend in a trial, and were given an assignmentsheet to guide them through the project (see Fig-ure 1). Because the class would also serve as thejury, students designed rating scales to determine,

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Figure 1French Revolution/Charles Dickens Trial Assignment Sheet

Introduction: Trials were a major part of both the French Revolution and the novel A Tale of Two Cities.In this project, you and your group members will assurme the role of prosecutors and defenders of majorcharacters, both historical and fictional.

Goal: The goal of the project is for you to apply the knowledge you have learned to either convict orliberate your character. You may attempt to manipulate the information to benefit your cause, but youmust stick closely to the facts you have seen or read. Lying, or perjury, will not be tolerated and willdrastically harm your grade.

Here is the process we will use:

1. Divide into groups of four. Characters will be randomly assigned to two opposing groups. There willbe no changing of groups once the characters have been assigned. The possible characters and thecharges against them are as follows:

Louis XVI - Treason Marquis St. Evremonde - MurderMarie Antoinette - Treason M. and Md. Defarge - MurderRobespierre - Treason/Murder Miss Prosser - Murder

2. Working with your group, you will choose witnesses to call, items of evidence to introduce, andstrategies to convict or defend. You must convince a jury consisting of all of your classmates that yourclient is either guilty or innocent. Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Ferguson will act as the judges for alternatecases, and we will determine if testimony, evidence, and arguments are consistent with the facts.3. A witness list will be turned in one week prior to the trial. Witnesses that appear on both lists will berole-played by either Mr. Gillespie or Mr. Ferguson. We will attempt to remain neutral during question-ing by both sides.

4. Witnesses that appear on only one side's list will be role-played by a person from your group. Again,the judge will determine if testimony is acceptable or not. Feel free to object to the other group'squestions, but do so in an organized manner.

5. The class will develop some guidelines for determining the outcome of the trial based on the proofpresented. These guidelines will help ensure neutrality by the jury.Good luck! Be creative, but be ethical!

based on the evidence presented during the trial,which side had won its case. A conglomeration ofthe rating scales created by students in all threeclasses is shown in Figure 2. Preparation for thetrials took place on Days 9-11; the trials took placeon Days 12-14.

Day 15An important step in all integrated units is to

allow students to summarize their knowledge insome type of writing. For this unit, we asked stu-dents to write a response to the following prompt:"Former Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse Tungwrote, 'The greater the suppression, the greater the

revolution.' Is this true for the French Revolution?On what do you base your answer?" Essays of thissort often prove to be the most interesting aspectof the unit because they provide insight into howstudents have integrated new information into theirexisting schemas. They also enable us to deter-mine the effects of this new knowledge on stu-dents' outlook on life-what we believe is the mostexciting aspect of teaching!

Planning the Unit: AssessmentsThe authors of the revised Taxonomy clearly

differentiated between formative and summativeassessments, and we believe that this is a critically

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3 2 1

2. Were the prosecution's witnesses believable?

YES NO5 4 3 2 1

3. Were the prosecution's closing arguments more

effective than the defense's?

YES NO5 4 3 2 1

4. Did the prosecution prove the charges beyonda reasonable doubt?

YES NO5 4 3 2 1

5. Which side do you believe best proved their case?

PROSECUTION DEFENSE5 4 3 2 1

Why? Briefly explain your rating.

important distinction. Formative assessment is

"gathering information about learning as learning

is taking place, so that 'in-flight' instructional

modifications may be made to improve the quality

or amount of learning" (Anderson, Krathwohl, et

al., 2001, pp. 101-102). In summative assessment,

on the other hand, we "gather information about

learning after learning should have occurred, usu-

ally for the purpose of assigning grades to stu-dents" (p. 102).

As mentioned earlier, we believe students

need a solid foundation of factual and conceptualknowledge before beginning work on projects.

Therefore, our focus early in the unit was on for-

mative assessments (see Figure 3 for an example).

We used information gained from these assessmentsto adjust our instruction to focus on those areas in

which students were experiencing difficulties.We rely heavily on the projects themselves

as summative assessments. This is appropriate since

projects require students to apply, analyze, evalu-

ate, and create based on the knowledge they have

gained previously, as well as the knowledge theygain while doing the research for the projects them-selves. By combining formative with summativeassessment, then, we are able to address all sixcategories of the Taxonomy Table.

One indirect outcome of this assessment pat-tern is that we have completely shifted our outlookon why we ask students to complete certain tasks.Similarly, and perhaps more importantly, studentscome to view assessment as a more personalizedevent, rather than an attempt to compare them withother students. They also seem to enjoy assignmentswhere they are asked to create a product, and appre-ciate the personalized feedback they receive from usas teachers.

Finally, we took great care in ensuring that ourassessments were aligned with our objectives. In thesample assessment in Figure 3, for example, studentsare asked to determine whether given titles were se-

rials, historical fiction, or neither. This assessmentwas aligned with the first Objective El (see Table 1).

Another example of formative assessment is

having students write a business letter to King LouisXVI from the perspective of a member of the ThirdEstate in France prior to the Revolution. Studentsshould identify themselves and their occupation,and describe their living conditions. Finally, theyshould ask the King for some relief, citing exam-ples from the French Enlightenment philosophersto suggest changes that Louis could make to pre-vent violence. This assessment is aligned with twoobjectives: WCI and E3.

Two of the summative assessments were a

matching quiz on factual knowledge (WC2) and a

written outline describing the three changes in gov-ernment during the French Revolution (WC3 and

E3). As mentioned earlier, however, the mock trialsare the major summative assessment, and constitute60% of a student's grade. These trials, primarilytargeted toward Objective E4, involved several ofthe other objectives as well as several of the cellsof the Taxonomy Table not specified as objectives(e.g., analyze, metacognitive knowledge). Servingas members of the jury, the class must evaluate[based on] factual, conceptual, and proceduralknowledge. And those students who are witnessesmust create a persona based on factual knowledge.This assessment, then, is truly summative in the

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Figure 2Burden of Proof-Prosecution

1. Did the prosecution present evidence that wasconsistent or at least plausible?

YES5 4


Figure 3Serials, Historical Fiction, and Novel Worksheet

Using the definition of a serial (or series), indicate whether each of the following items is an exampleof a serial by writing yes or no in the blank next to it.

_ Superman comic book _ Reader's Digest

Survivor

-_____A Tale of Two Cities

______ Titanic

Vogue

Star Wars

Days of Our Lives

List any two serials you have seen or read.

Using the definition of historical fiction, indicate whether each of the following items is an example ofhistorical fiction by writing yes or no in the blank next to it.

______ Titanic

______ The Patriot

-_____Julius Caesar by Shakespeare

_ The Hunt for Red October

____ Autobiography of Malcolm X

A Tale of Two Cities

_____ Forrest Gump

_____ JFK

List one example of historical fiction you have seen or read. Also, give one example of a work youhave seen or read that is either nonfiction or pure fiction.

On a separate sheet of paper, write an answer to the following question:Using what you know about the novel as a form of entertainment, social commentary, self-expression, anda financial undertaking, discuss the role of modem movies as novels. Are movies better than novels? Why?

sense that it "sums up" student learning in a com-prehensive, integrative way.

ConclusionThe Taxonomy Table has helped us develop

our integrated, thematic course in three very spe-cific ways. First, it has given us a common lan-guage with which to translate and discuss statestandards from two different subject areas. Sec-ond, it has helped us understand how our subjectsoverlap and how we can develop conceptual andprocedural knowledge concurrently. Third, the Tax-onomy Table has given us a new outlook on as-

sessment and has allowed us to create assignmentsand projects that require students to operate at morecomplex levels of thinking. These benefits alonehave helped us develop a course that is enjoyablearid challenging for our students and ourselves.

ReferencesAnderson, L.W. (Ed.), Krathwohl, D.R. (Ed.), Aira-

sian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pin-trich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). Ataxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: Arevision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Ob-jectives (Complete edition). New York: Longman.

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? Ann Byrd

The Revised Taxonomy andProspective Teachers

OVER THE NEXT TEN YEARS, an additional 2.20 million teachers will be needed in the United

States. Increases in student enrollment, reductions inclass sizes at the primary grades, implementationof full-day kindergarten programs, and increasesin the requirements for high school graduation arejust some of the contributing factors to the tre-mendous teacher shortage. In South Carolina, eventhough the number of teachers has increased by30% since the 1980s, the state's teacher educationprograms will produce only about three-fourths ofthe teachers that will be needed during the nextdecade (South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruit-ment, 1998).

With the national and state statistics in mind,South Carolina has proactively addressed teacherrecruitment challenges by targeting precollegiateaudiences as part of an ongoing campaign to pro-mote teaching as an attractive option for academi-cally talented high school students. By offering asurvey education course called Teacher Cadet, ap-proximately 75% of the high schools in South Caro-lina provide these students with opportunities toexplore the role of the teacher and the importanceof education-to themselves and to society.

The Teacher Cadet Program (TCP) is an in-novative teacher recruitment strategy that provideshigh school students with a challenging introduc-

P. Ann Byrd is the executive director of the South Caro-lina Center for Teacher Recruitment.

tion to the teaching profession. Participation in TCPgives high school students insights into the natureof teaching, the problems of schooling, and thecritical issues affecting the quality of education inAmerica's schools. The primary goal of TCP is toencourage academically talented or capable studentswho possess exemplary interpersonal and leader-ship skills to consider teaching as a career. Animportant secondary goal is to provide those whochoose not to enter the teaching profession withsufficient understanding about teaching and schoolsso they will be civic advocates of education, regard-less of what occupation or profession they enter.

A Brief Introduction to theTeacher Cadet Program

Piloted in four South Carolina high schoolsin 1985-1986, the TCP has grown to include ap-proximately 150 of the 200 high schools in thestate. Currently, TCP enrolls approximately 2,500high school juniors and seniors each year. To beeligible for TCP, students must maintain at least a3.0 average (on a 4.0 scale) in a college preparato-ry curriculum, receive written recommendationsfrom five teachers, and submit an essay giving theirreasons for wishing to participate in the class.

TCP instructors serve as facilitators of learn-ing, rather than the traditionally stereotypical "foun-tains of knowledge." Their role is to raise questionsand engage in a meaningful dialogue with their


Copyright ©3 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State University

ByrdThe Revised Taxonomy and Prospective Teachers

students about possible answers to these questions.The Cadets, as they are called, are viewed as ac-tive participants in the learning process, capableof constructing their own knowledge. The curricu-lum provides a balance of information and oppor-tunities for discovery. The use of technology,opportunities for problem solving, and student in-teractivity are key elements in making the curricu-lum appealing to both students and teachers.

The curriculum for TCP, Experiencing Edu-cation, is divided into three major sections: TheLearner, The School, and The Teacher and Teach-ing. The text is designed to introduce students tothe field of education. The first unit, The Learner,helps students become better acquainted with them-selves as individuals, learners, and communitymembers. The second unit, The School, helps stu-dents develop a greater understanding of the histo-ry of education in South Carolina and in the nation,as well as insights into the structure and functionsof American schools and school systems. The thirdunit, The Teacher and Teaching, is designed toacquaint students with the art and science of teach-ing, as well as focus the attention of students onthe teacher as both a person and a professional.After having studied themselves and others as learn-ers in Section I, and examining the history, orga-nization, and personnel of the school in Section II,students engage in the observation, analysis, and,ultimately, the practice of classroom teaching whileworking through Section III.

The primary purpose of this article is to illus-trate how TCP teachers can use the revised Taxono-my to plan the units included in Section III, and alsohow the revised Taxonomy enables the Cadets toacquire a conceptual framework they can use tobetter understand teachers and teaching. Further-more, because the major objective of Section III isfor students to examine the art and science of teach-ing as a profession-from both sides of the desk-the language of the revised Taxonomy can facilitatecommunication between teachers and students.

Section III contains the following five units,each of which is defined by explicit objectives andsets of connected activities:

Unit I - The TeacherUnit 2 - The Process of TeachingUnit 3 - Methods of Teaching

Unit 4 - SAY (Science and Youth), MAY (Mathand Youth), and FLAY (Foreign Languageand Youth)

Unit 5 - The Real Thing

After completing an initial series of focusedobservations in early childhood, elementary, mid-dle, and high school classrooms, students studywhat is known about teachers and teaching. Theculminating activity for this section, which occursin Unit 5, is for students to serve as teacher internsin a classroom for at least three weeks. While do-ir[g so, students analyze their own work, their co-operating teacher's work, and the work of theirstudents to enhance and reinforce the knowledgeand skills gained throughout the TCP course.

Using the Revised Taxonomyto Examine Unit 3

To illustrate the use of the revised Taxono-my, objectives for Unit 3, Methods of Teaching,will be used. According to the standard curricu-lum, Unit 3 contains a single goal and a singleterminal objective. The goal states that "studentswill become familiar with the various methods todeliver lessons creatively and effectively." The ter-minal objective, which in the context of the re-vised Taxonomy is actually an activity (see Raths,this issue), states that "students will produce a logdocumenting the various teaching methods theyobserve used in their different classes throughouta period of one week." Immediately, we have theopportunity to discuss the key differences betweenobjectives and activities. Note that this discussioncan be approached from either the teacher's or stu-dent's point of view.

From the teacher's perspective, the fundamen-tal question is "What are students expected to learnby producing a log documenting the various teach-ing methods they observed during the week?" Fromthe student's perspective, the fundamental ques-tion is "What did you learn by producing a logdocumenting the various teaching methods youobserved during the week?" In addition to focus-ing on the distinction between objectives and ac-tivities, this discussion also leads to a realizationon both parts that expectations do not always be-come realities.

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The curriculum guide for the course includessuggested activities, rationales for the various activi-ties, student and/or instructor handouts, and assess-ment options. Because the Teacher Cadet course iswhat has traditionally been called a "survey"course, the instructor has the option of choosingthe particular activities and assessments he or shewill use. Unit 3 takes place during the third quar-

ter of the course, so the instructor is often able to

explore most, if not all, of the 11 suggested activ-ities within a three-week period. Each activity re-

quires approximately one or two days to complete,depending on the depth of discussion that follows

each activity. Due to space limitations, it is impos-sible to describe and consider all 11 activities inthis paper. Two activities, "An Overview of Meth-

odology" (which is the introductory activity for

the unit) and "It's a Matter of Style," will be usedto illustrate the points to be made.

An Overview of MethodologyThe teacher begins by writing on the board:

"Teaching methods: What works?" Students are

asked to think about and then "discuss" this ques-tion with one another. However, students are told

they must remain silent during the "discussion."They may go to the board to write their responses,but they cannot communicate orally with anyone.If they wish to respond to another student's com-ments, they can do so physically (for example, by

shaking their heads) or by returning to the boardto write their reaction.

Once all students have had the opportunityto express their views, the teacher calls on severalstudents to read aloud the comment from the board

that they find most meaningful to them and ex-

plain why they chose that comment. This typicallyleads to a "real" discussion of teaching methods.The teacher concludes the discussion by explain-ing that, during this unit, they will be studyingseveral frequently used teaching methods.

In terms of the revised Taxonomy, this activ-ity can serve several functions. As an overview, it

can serve a motivational function. If this is thecase, we are dealing with the Metacognitive Knowl-

edge cells of the Taxonomy Table. Or it can serveto illustrate the importance of verbalization in com-munication, an important principle. In that case,

we may be dealing with the Conceptual Knowl-

edge cells of the Taxonomy Table. The activitycould also serve to illustrate the importance of us-ing written rather than oral communication in theclassroom to provide equal opportunity for all stu-dents and minimize the likelihood of one or twostudents dominating the discussion. Once again, weare likely dealing with Conceptual Knowledge.

The "correct" placement of the activity in theTaxonomy Table is not the issue here; the issue isthe purpose for which the activity was chosen bythe teacher (i.e., the activity-objective connection).Rather than having an activity for activity's sake,the revised Taxonomy makes it clear that activi-ties are selected primarily for their effect on stu-dent learning.

In terms of assessment, students are asked togenerate a list of pros and cons about "Silent Graf-fiti" as a teaching methodology, and list examplesof ways this technique might be used in other class-es. In terms of the Taxonomy Table, the focus ofthis assessment is on analyzing metacognitiveknowledge (i.e., what each individual student be-lieves the pros and cons to be in some larger con-text), and applying procedural knowledge(particularly item Cc within the Knowledge Dimen-

sion, "knowledge of criteria for determining whento use appropriate procedures").

It's a Matter of StyleThe teacher opens the lesson by announcing

to students that some changes are going to be madein the classroom to enhance their learning. Theteacher explains that two possible changes are be-ing considered and that he or she would like thestudents' input before making the decision. Usingan overhead, the teacher presents the two possiblescenarios.

In Classroom 1, soft music will be playingcontinuously while students are working. Harsh flu-orescent lighting will be replaced with softer, low-er lighting. The room will be kept at a comfortable,cool temperature throughout the school year. Theroom will be carpeted. Desks will be replaced withenough sofas and comfortable easy chairs and rock-ing chairs around the room to accommodate every-one. Laptop desk pads can be used for students towork on. Time will be allowed throughout the day

246

ByrdThe Revised Taxonomy and Prospective Teachers

for students to work on several projects at a time,alone or in groups. Students will be permitted totake breaks as the need arises. Chewing gum, so-das, and snacks will also be permitted while stu-dents are studying.

In contrast, Classroom 2 will be a quiet zonein which noise will be kept to a minimum in orderto allow students to study. Full use will be madeof natural light, bright outdoor style lighting withskylights and recessed lighting over study areas.Passive radiant heat will keep the room comfort-ably warm. New desks and individual study cubi-cles will be placed in the room. Desks will bearranged in the central portion of the room with astudy cubicle placed around the perimeter of theroom. A schedule will be set up to allow studentsuninterrupted study time for each subject. A breakwill be scheduled after study time. Snacks will bepermitted during break time.

Students are then asked to select the class-room option they consider to be the best and togive reasons for their choices. Next, the teacherposes the question of what types of learners maydo better in the two classrooms. The teacher guidesthe discussion to ensure that issues pertaining tothe analytical (left-brained) learners (Classroom 2scenario) and the global (right-brained) learners(Classroom 1 scenario) are considered. To facili-tate this discussion, the teacher distributes copiesof the characteristics of global and analytic learn-ers. Following the discussion, the teacher remindsstudents that they will encounter both types of stu-dents in an ordinary classroom, and asks them todescribe in writing how they can design a class-room that accommodates the needs and preferencesof both types of students.

Like the Overview of Methodology activity,this activity reinforces the need to connect activi-ties to objectives. When this is done, we see thatthe emphasis is on understanding conceptual knowl-edge (e.g., types of classrooms, types of students)first, but later shifts to creating [based on] factual,conceptual, and, perhaps, procedural knowledge.

In terms of assessment, students work insmall, mixed groups of global and analytical learn-ers to create an ideal classroom and mini lessonplan for operating within that classroom. Both theclassroom organization and lesson plan must ad-

dress the learning needs of all students, whetherthey be analytical or global. The descriptions ofthe ideal classroom and mini lesson plan are eval-uated by their classmates and the teacher based ona predetermined set of criteria that relate to previ-otis studies of effective classroom cultures and les-sons. Students are assessed on their ability to createarn ideal classroom and lesson plans as defined bythe criteria established.

In terms of the Taxonomy Table, the initialreaction is that we are dealing with Create as theprimary cognitive process. However, it is not theprocess but the result or outcome of that processthat is being assessed and evaluated. Consequently,the assessment emphasis is on Understanding Con-ceptual Knowledge, where the relevant conceptualknowledge is defined by the evaluation criteria.

ConclusionThe use of the revised Taxonomy, particularly

the Taxonomy Table, can assist both teachers andsttLdents in Teacher Cadet Programs. Perhaps itsgreatest value is in its ability to give teachers andstLudents something to reflect on. For years we haveheard about the value of reflection as part of effec-tive teaching. Quite clearly, reflection is a process.The issue becomes, "About what should teachersretlect?" The revised Taxonomy provides one an-swer to this question. Teachers should reflect onthe fundamental questions that have plagued themfor some time (see Anderson, Krathwohl, et al.,2001, chap. 14). Within this larger context, teach-ers who engage in reflection (given sufficient timean(d opportunity to do so) will gain a deeper un-derstanding of what is truly known about class-rocom practice and, ultimately, what they can do toimprove classroom practice.

The rather unique setting in which TeacherCalet instructors work includes their being able toreflect on their classroom practice while workingwith potential preservice students who are also en-gaged in thinking about classroom practice. Whenone considers that the activities included in theTCP curriculum are much too numerous to be cov-ered in their entirety, the revised Taxonomy pro-vides a framework for determining what shouldand, perhaps, must be addressed if the desired cog-nitive processes and types of knowledge are to be

247


acquired or constructed. Because the course istaught in approximately 150 of the 200 high schoolsin South Carolina by teachers with varying degreesof knowledge and expertise, this reflection and self-awareness (within the context of the revised Tax-onomy) has great potential to produce a desiredconsistency across sites.

In addition, the Taxonomy Table provides aframework within which TCP teachers can modelnot only the way they teach but also the way theyexamine and analyze their teaching. In this regard,Cadets should learn that they can only judge theeffectiveness of their teaching in terms of whatstudents actually learn. Simply stated, the revisedTaxonomy moves prospective teachers away froma "best practice" approach to teaching.

Ultimately, applying the revised Taxonomyto the objectives of the TCP curriculum will beuseful in revising the curriculum to more specifi-cally address the overall purpose of the course andthe present and future needs of those who enroll init. For curricular alignment, examining the core

standards, instructional activities, and assessmentsof the course in terms of the revised Taxonomyprovides yet another lens through which to exam-ine the effectiveness of the course content in itsultimate goal to attract high schools students toenter the teaching profession.


P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R.,Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomyfor learning, teaching, and assessing: A revisionqf Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives(Complete edition). New York: Longman.

South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment.(1998a). Experiencing education: Teacher cadets.Rock Hill, SC: Author.

South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment.(1998b). Strengthening the profession that shapesSouth Carolina's future-Teaching. Rock Hill, SC:Author.

South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment. (2001).SCCTR Annual Report 2000-2001. Rock Hill, SC:Author.

up

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Peter WAirasianHelena Miranda

The Role of Assessment in theRevised Taxonomy

A S MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY, one of the majorA differences between the original Taxonomyand the revised Taxonomy is that the original Tax-onomy consisted of a single dimension; the revisedTaxonomy reflects a dual perspective on learningand cognition. Having two dimensions to guide theprocesses of stating objectives and planning andguiding instruction leads to sharper, more clearlydefined assessments and a stronger connection ofassessment to both objectives and instruction. Thepower of assessments, regardless of whether theytake the form of a classroom quiz, a standardizedtest, or a statewide assessment battery, resides intheir close connection to objectives and instruc-tion. The Taxonomy Table is a useful tool for care-fully examining and ultimately improving thisconnection.

Assessment Implications ofthe Revised Taxonomy

Regarding assessment, the two-dimensionalTaxonomy Table emphasizes the need for assess-ment practices to extend beyond discrete bits ofknowledge and individual cognitive processes tofocus on more complex aspects of learning andthinking. It also provides a way to better under-stand a broad array of assessment models and ap-

plications. Finally, the Taxonomy Table reinforcesthe perspective of the authors of the original Tax-oromy that different types of objectives requirediFferent types of assessment, whereas similar typesof objectives (regardless of subject matter) requiresimilar approaches to assessment.

The Cognitive Process dimension calls ourattention to the need to find ways of validly andre]iably assessing so-called "higher-order" process-es One of the purposes of the original Taxonomywas to illustrate how multiple-choice test itemscould be used to test various taxonomic levels. Arethese tests still useful in this regard, or are newassessment techniques needed? The Knowledgedimension emphasizes the need to find ways ofvalidly and reliably assessing metacognitive knowl-edge. Knowledge of cognitive strategies, cognitivetasks, and self not only requires different ways ofthinking about assessment, but, in the latter case,reintroduces the need to engage in affective as-sessment. The need to assess higher-order cogni-tive processes and metacognitive knowledge poseschallenges for all who are engaged in the assess-ment field.

It is generally understood, but it bears repeat-ing, that the information obtained during the assess-ment process is influenced to a great extent by whathas preceded it during the instructional process,paiticularly as both processes (instruction and as-sessment) are aligned with the stated objective. If

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 41, Number 4, Autumn 2002Copyright © 2002 College of Education, The Ohio State University

Peter W. Airasian is a professor of education and HelenaMiranda is a graduate assistant, both at Boston College.


the three components are well aligned, the assess-ment results are likely to be reasonably valid. Con-versely, if the three components are not wellaligned, the assessment results will be of question-able validity.

Consider an educational objective frequentlygiven by English teachers: "Students will learn tostate the main idea of a short story." In this objec-tive, the critical verb is "state" and the noun phraseis "main idea of a short story." But there are mul-tiple ways students can learn to state a main idea.For example, students can state the main idea byremembering what the teacher has told them aboutthe story's main idea during instruction (e.g., "Thisis the main idea of short story A."). Students canalso state the main idea based on inferences theymake from key information provided in the shortstory. In this case, students learn by understanding(since inferring lies within Understand in the Tax-

onomy Table). Alternatively, students can state astory's main idea by following a set of steps theteacher has taught them to help find main ideas, orapplying procedural knowledge. Finally, students

can state the main idea by differentiating key pointsfrom supporting details. In this case, because dif:ferentiating lies within Analyze in the Taxonomy

Table, students would learn by analyzing. In a class-room or statewide assessment, then, test items or as-sessment tasks for the objective "Students will learnto state the main idea of a short story" could focuson remembering factual knowledge, understanding,applying procedural knowledge, or analyzing.

To avoid this confusion, we have suggested thatthe 19 cognitive processes identified in the revisedTaxonomy (or, alternatively, the six process catego-ries) should be used as the verbs when stating ob-jectives. Ambiguous verbs such as "state," "list,""demonstrate," and so on, should be used with greatcare because many of these terms are more appli-cable to assessment than to learning. For example,students can demonstrate that they have remem-bered what they should have remembered. At theother end of the spectrum, they can demonstrate

the results of an extremely creative process. In be-tween, they can demonstrate their ability to under-stand, apply, analyze, and evaluate.

Another benefit of the revised Taxonomy isto focus on methods of assessment linked with par-

ticular types of objectives. Consider, for example,the following three objectives:

* Students can remember addition facts totaling 40.* Students can recall definitions of social studies

terms.* Students can recall important dates in the Civil

War.

Each of these objectives focuses on a differ-ent subject area: mathematics, social studies, andhistory. Yet, because all three objectives are ex-amples of remembering factual knowledge, the ap-propriate test items or assessment tasks will all bequite similar. For example:

* List all pairs of whole numbers that sum to 40.* List the social studies terms that match the fol-

lowing definitions.* List the dates on which the following events in

the Civil War took place.

Thus, objectives as varied as remembering the al-phabet, remembering the names for parts of a cell,remembering the location of cities on a map, re-membering key facts about various countries, andother "remember factual knowledge" objectives willtypically be assessed by asking students to "state,""list," "label," or "name" the relevant factual

knowledge.There are similar generalized assessment for-

mats and approaches for understanding conceptualknowledge and applying procedural knowledge. Weknow from the revised Taxonomy that conceptualknowledge includes categories, principles, andmodels. One way to determine if students under-stand a particular category, for example, is to havethem determine whether a particular instance orexample falls within the category. In the revisedTaxonomy, this cognitive process would be termedclassifying, which lies within Understand. It is

important to note that this approach to assessmentis applicable regardless of the specific categoryincluded in the objective (e.g., rational numbers,sonnets, arachnids, civil law, or impressionist paint-ings). One possible assessment format for all ofthese would be: "Here is an example. Is this anexample of X?" where X could be replaced by arational number, sonnet, and so on.

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Airasian and MirandaRole of Assessment in the Revised Taxonomy

Using the Taxonomy Tableto Examine Assessment

In order to critically examine and refine therevised Taxonomy, we asked six teachers, workingat a variety of grade levels, to describe actual in-structional units they had taught in their main subjectarea. A great deal of information about the teachers'units and the usefulness of the revised Taxonomy,particularly the Taxonomy Table, derived from ourexamination of these written vignettes. In particu-lar, the use of the Taxonomy Table on the teach-ers' vignettes provides useful information aboutthe validity of classroom and statewide assessmentsas evidenced by the alignment of the assessmentswith both objectives and instructional activities.

We illustrate this feature of the TaxonomyTable by analyzing the Parliamentary Acts vignettein terms of the stated objectives, the instructionalactivities, and the assessments. Figure I summa-rizes the placement of the teacher's four statedobjectives in the Taxonomy Table. Note that oneof the objectives is placed in two cells of the Tax-onomy Table. This objective states that studentsshould be able to choose a colonial character orgroup and write a persuasive editorial stating his/her/its position. Writing such an editorial is a cre-ative process that requires two types of knowledge:factual knowledge (e.g., specific details about var-ious colonial characters) and conceptual knowledge(e.g., criteria that define good persuasive writing).Brief statements of all four objectives are includedat the bottom of Figure 1.

Subsequent to identifying the intended ob-jectives, the teacher turned her attention to instruc-tion. The planned instructional activities required10 days to complete. Since instructional activitiesare not the primary focus of this article, they aresimply listed in terms of the sequence and numberof days for sets of activities. These are shown inFigure 2. To examine the connection between theactivities and objectives, the objectives shown inFigure 1 are repeated in Figure 2.

In most cases, the instructional activities areclosely aligned with the objectives. Specifically,there are instructional activities related to each ofthe four objectives (cells Al, A6, B2, B5, and B6).There are two cells of the table (B4 and C3) thathave instructional activities but no stated objectives.

The final piece of the vignette concerns theassessments. The placement of the assessments usedby the teacher in terms of the Taxonomy Table isshown in Figure 3. The placement of both the ob-jectives and instructional activities in the Taxono-fry Table as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2 arereproduced in Figure 3.

As the key at the bottom of Figure 3 indicates,the teacher used three assessments: classroom ques-tions and informal observations (Assessment A), aquiz (Assessment B), and a performance assess-ment (namely, the writing of a persuasive editori-al) (Assessment C). As shown in the figure, thequiz was intended to assess student mastery of thefirst objective ("Remember specific parts of theParliamentary Acts"). Classroom questions and in-formal observations were intended to assess stu-dent mastery of the second objective ("Explain theconsequences of the Parliamentary Acts for differ-erit colonial groups"). And, the performance as-sessment was intended to assess student masteryof the third objective ("Choose a colonial charac-te r or group and write a persuasive editorial stat-ing his/her/its position").

The completed Taxonomy Table shown inFigure 3 indicates strong alignment of assessment,objectives, and instruction in the unit, particularlyevidenced in cells Al, A6, B2, and B6. It is note-worthy that the performance assessment is in mul-tiple cells because 10 criteria are involved inevaluating the editorial. One or more of the crite-ria are placed in A6, one or more in B6, and oneor more in C3.

In light of this high degree of alignment, twoof the other cells, C3 and B5, are worthy of com-ment. In Cell C3, we have some activities and oneor more criteria related to the persuasive essay,but we do not have an explicitly stated objective.In B5, on the other hand, we have an explicitlystated objective and several days of activities, butwe do not have any direct assessment. Finally, weco jld envision a cell in which we have an explicit-ly stated objective and a direct assessment, but noinstructional activities. These three cells indicatethree types of misalignment involving assessment.Cell C3 illustrates what has been termed "instruc-tional sensitivity" (i.e., the assessment is "sensi-tivz" to instruction) (Haladyna & Roid, 1981). Cell

251




Dimension

A. Factual Objective 1 Objective 3Knowledge

B. Conceptual Objective 2 Objective 4 Objective 3

Knowledge



Key

Objective 1: Remember the specific parts of the Parliamentary Acts.Objective 2: Explain the consequences of the Parliamentary Acts for different colonial groups.Objective 3: Choose a colonial character or group and write a persuasive editorial stating his/her/its position on

the Acts.Objective 4: Self- and peer edit the editorial.

Figure 1. An analysis of the Parliamentary Acts vignette based on stated objectives.



Dimension

A. Factual Objective 1 Objective 3

Knowledge Days 2, 3, & 5 Days 8-10

Activities Activities

B. Conceptual Objective 2 Days 6-7 Objective 4 Objective 3

Knowledge Days 1, 4-7 Activities Days 8-10 Days 8-10

Activities Activities Activities

C. Procedural Day 4Knowledge Activities


Key

Objective 1: Remember the specific parts of the Parliamentary Acts.Objective 2: Explain the consequences of the Parliamentary Acts for different colonial groups.

Objective 3: Choose a colonial character or group and write a persuasive editorial stating his/her/its position on

the Acts.Objective 4: Self- and peer edit the editorial.

Figure 2. An analysis of the Parliamentary Acts vignette based on stated objectives and instructional

activites.

252

Airasian and MirandaRole of Assessment in the Revised Taxonomy

The Cognitive P'rocess Dimension


A. Factual Objective 1 Objective 3Knowledge Days 2, 3, & 5 Days 8-10

Activities ActivitiesAssessment B Assessment C

B. Conceptual Objective 2 Days 6-7 Objective 4 Objective 3Knowledge Days 1, 4-7 Activities Days 8-10 Days 8-10

Activities Activities ActivitiesAssessment A Assessment C

C. Procedural Day 4Knowledge Activities

Assess-_______________ ~~~ment C


Key

Objective 1: Remember the specific parts of the Parliamentary Acts.Objective 2: Explain the consequences of the Parliamentary Acts for different colonial groups.Objective 3: Choose a colonial character or group and write a persuasive editorial stating his/her/its position on

the Acts.Objective 4: Self- and peer edit the editorial.Assessment A: Classroom Questions and Informal ObservationsAssessment B: QuizAssessment C: Performance Assessment (editorial, with 10 evaluation criteria)

Figure 3. An analysis of the Parliamentary Acts vignette based on stated objectives, instructionalactivites, and assessments.

B5 illustrates what might be termed "assessment-free" curriculum and instruction. The "envisionedcell" illustrates the traditional concept of "contentvalidity," where concerns for students' opportuni-ties to learn the content are minimal.

ConclusionSevere misalignment of assessment, objec-

tives, and instruction can cause numerous difficul-ties. If, for example, instruction is not aligned withassessment, even the highest quality instruction willlikely not lead to high student performance on theassessments. As mentioned previously, by focus-ing on the Taxonomy Table we can increase thealignment of assessment with both objectives andinstruction.

In addition to its use in classroom instructionanti assessment, the Taxonomy Table can also beused to analyze the results of statewide assessmentsin terms of their possible and likely impact on cur-riculum and instruction. Increasingly, teachers andtheir students are confronted with statewide stan-daids and corresponding statewide assessments.These high-stakes assessments have become con-sequential for both students and teachers. Usingthe Taxonomy Table to increase the alignment ofschool-wide or district-wide curriculum and instruc-tion with state standards and state-mandated as-sessments will enable teachers to focus on thestandards without "teaching to the test."

Because the Taxonomy Table focuses on stu-dent learning rather than student performance, it

253


emphasizes the need to focus on the cognitive process-es and types of knowledge required to achieve thestandards, rather than the specific or general typesof items included on the statewide assessments.Once determined, this knowledge of relevant cog-nitive processes and types of knowledge (a kind ofeducator metacognitive knowledge) can be used tomake necessary adjustments in curriculum and in-

struction that are needed to improve the effective-ness of the entire educational system.

ReferenceHaladyna, T. & Roid, G. (1981). The role of instructional

sensitivity in the empirical review of criterion-refer-enced test items. Journal of Educational Measure-ment, 18, 39-53.

iI�

254

Lorin W Anderson

Curricular Alignment: A Re-Examination

THERE IS A STORY that needs to be told. . . . It isa story about children and also about curricu-

la-curricula transforming national visions and aimsinto intentions that shape children's opportunities forlearning through schooling. (Schmidt & McKnight,1995, p. 346)We must "[change] the question from 'What stu-dents know and can do' to 'What students know andcan do as a result of their educational experiences."'(Burstein & Winters, 1994)

During the past half-century there has been agrowing body of evidence supporting a fundamen-tal educational truism: that what and how muchstudents are taught is associated with, and likelyinfluences, what and how much they learn. In fact,the results of several fairly recent studies suggestthat, in terms of measured student achievement,what students are taught is more important thanhow they are taught (Alton-Lee & Nuthall, 1992;Breitsprecher, 1991; Gamoran, Porter, Smithson,& White, 1997). Over time, different terminologyhas been used to denote the "what" of teaching.The three terms that have generated the most re-search interest are "content coverage," "opportunityto learn," and "curriculum alignment." Important-ly, these are not just different labels for the samebasic idea; there are important conceptual distinc-tions underlying them. These distinctions can beunderstood by examining Figure 1.

Content Coverage, Opportunity toLearn, and Curriculum AlignmentFigure 1 contains three primary components

of curriculum: objectives (also known in today'svocabulary as content standards or curriculum stan-dards), instructional activities and supporting ma-terials, and assessments (including standardizedtests). The sides of the triangle represent relation-ships between pairs of components: objectives withassessments (side A), objectives with instructionalactivities and materials (side B), and assessmentswith instructional activities and materials (side C).

Traditionally, the issue of the relationship be-tween objectives and assessments (side A) has fallenunder the "tests and measurement" umbrella of con-tent validity. That is, to what extent does the testmeasure the important curricular objectives? This re-mains an important question, as evidenced by recentstucies conducted by Buckendahl, Plake, Impara, andIrwin (2000), Kendall (1999), and Webb (1999).

Both content coverage and opportunity tolearn, as defined by Burstein (1993), have to dowith the relationship of instructional activities andmaterials with assessments (side C). The primarydifference between the two concepts is where theanalysis begins. Studies of content coverage typi-callv begin with an examination of the instructionalactiv/ities and materials (particularly the materials).The question is, "Is what we are teaching being test-ed?' Examples of early studies of content coverage


Lorin W. Anderson is a professor of education at theUniversity of South Carolina.



Standards/Objectives (S/0)

CAssessments/Tests (A/T) Instructional Activities

and Materials (IAM)

Figure 1. Relationships Among Standards/Objectives, Instructional Activities and Materials, and Assess-

ments/Tests.

include Good, Grouws, and Beckerman's (1978) study

of the relationship of the number of textbook pages

covered with mathematics achievement test scores,and Anderson, Evertson, and Brophy's (1979) study

of the number of basal readers completed by first-grade reading groups in relation to reading achieve-

ment test scores. More recent studies of contentcoverage have been reported by Elia (1994), Gamo-

ran, Porter, Smithson, and White (1997), Kim

(1993), Muthen et al. (1995), and Schmidt andMcKnight (1995).

In contrast to content coverage, studies of

the opportunity to learn typically begin with an

examination of the assessment tasks or test items.The question is, "Are we teaching what is being test-

ed?" Cooley and Leinhardt (1980), for example, askedteachers to estimate the percentage of their studentswho had been taught the minimum material neces-

sary to pass each item on a standardized achieve-

ment test. In a related study, Leinhardt, Zigmond,and Cooley (1981) asked teachers to indicatewhether each student or sample of students hadbeen taught the information required to answer spe-cific test items. Similarly, Winfield (1993) askedteachers to rate each of 34 test items on a five-point scale in terms of "(a) the number of times amathematics concept was taught, (b) the frequencyof review or reteaching the concept, (c) the num-ber of settings in which the particular test formatwas used to teach the concept, (d) the frequency ofusage of the format, (e) the extent to which theconcept was emphasized in the school reading pro-gram, and (f) the teachers' perceptions of students'mastery of the concept" (p. 292).

If content validity studies focus on side A of

the triangle depicted in Figure 1, and content cov-erage and opportunity to learn studies focus onside C of the triangle, then two questions remain.

256

AndersonCurricular Alignment

First, what about side B of the triangle? Second,where does curriculum alignment fit into all of this?With respect to the first question, there have beenseveral studies of the relationship of objectives toinstructional activities and materials. However, nogeneral term has been used to group these studies.Ippolito (1990), for example, examined the rela-tionship between instructional materials and "cri-terion objectives" (p. 1). Similarly, NC HELPS(1999) focused on the way the curriculum wastaught to ensure that it was consistent with thecontent of the curriculum as specified in the NorthCarolina "Standard Course of Study." Finally, Pick-reign and Capps (2000) compared the "geometrylanguage" used in K-6 textbooks with the languagefound in mathematics standards documents.

With respect to the second question, curricu-lum alignment is represented by the entire trianglein Figure 1. That is, curriculum alignment requiresa strong link between objectives and assessments,between objectives and instructional activities andmaterials, and between assessments and instruc-tional activities and materials. In other words, con-tent validity, content coverage, and opportunity tolearn are all included within the more general con-cept of "curriculum alignment."

Over the years, researchers have come to real-ize the importance of designing studies of sufficientcomplexity to examine the complete set of interrela-tionships included in Figure 1. However, only a fewsuch studies currently exist. One noteworthy ex-ample, a study conducted by Breitsprecher (1991),examined the relative effects of two instructionalactivity variables (verbal mediation and feedbackmonitoring) and two levels of content validity (highand low) on student achievement. The results ofthe study suggest that all three variables-verbalmediation, feedback monitoring, and content va-lidity-were significantly related to studentachievement. However, content validity exerted aslightly greater influence than either of the instruc-tional activity variables.

A Framework for AnalyzingCurriculum Alignment

Although there are several methods used tocollect data on curriculum alignment (Harskamp& Surhre, 1994; Winfield, 1993), relatively few

analytical frameworks exist for making sense ofthe data collected from curricular alignment stud-ies. Without an appropriate framework, the inter-pretation of the data remains rather problematic.Consider, for example, questions often asked ofteachers in curricular alignment studies:

* What percent of students have been taught theminimum material needed to pass this item?(Cooley and Leinhardt, 1980)

* To what extent is this item/objective empha-sized in the school mathematics curriculum forfourth grade? (Winfield, 1993)

* Have you taught the mathematics material need-ed to answer the item correctly? If you have nottaught it, was it because (a) the topic had beentaught the prior year, (b) the topic will be taughtlater, (c) the topic is not in the school curricu-lum at all, or (d) the topic was not taught forother reasons? (McDonnell, 1995)

Terms and phrases such as "minimum material,""mathematics material," "topic," and "item/objec-tive" are certainly open to multiple interpretations.

A few attempts have been made to designappropriate analytic frameworks (see, for exam-ple, Webb, 1999). Gamoran and his colleagues(1997) developed one of the most comprehensiveframeworks in this regard. Their framework con-sists of 10 general areas of mathematics, with eacharea divided into 7-10 specific topics, and six lev-els of "cognitive demand." Overall, this framework"yielded 558 specific types of content that mighthave been taught and/or tested" (p. 329). Althoughthis framework clearly moves us in the right direc-tioII, it suffers from at least three major problems.First, with 558 cells, it is too cumbersome to beuseful to most teachers. Second, it is likely to re-sulb in an underestimate of curriculum alignment.For example, Gamoran and his colleagues foundthai: only 19 of the 558 cells were included on theprimary test they examined. This initial finding ledthem to a more detailed examination of the cellsthai were included on the test. Third, the frame-work is limited to mathematics. Thus, similar al-ternative frameworks would be needed for all othersubject matters.

The Taxonomy Table is a useful frameworkfor estimating curriculum alignment in all subject

257


matters at virtually every grade or school level. It

addresses each of the three problems associatedwith the Gamoran et al. framework. First, it con-tains 24 cells (not 558). Furthermore, as illustratedby the vignettes included in the revised Taxonomyvolume and the Ferguson and Byrd articles (thisissue), teachers can use the framework to examineand enhance curriculum alignment. Second, becausealignment is estimated in terms of the relation-ships of objectives, instructional activities andmaterials, and assessments with the TaxonomyTable, rather than with each other, the alignmentprocess (a) focuses quite directly on student learn-ing and (b) yields reasonably valid estimates of

alignment. Third, as mentioned earlier, the Taxon-omy Table is generic. By replacing topics with

types of knowledge, the Taxonomy Table can be

used with all subject matters.

Using the Taxonomy Table toEstimate Curriculum Alignment

The vignettes included in the revised Taxono-my volume and the articles written by Ferguson andByrd (this issue) illustrate quite nicely the processused to estimate curriculum alignment with the aid

of the Taxonomy Table. Before the process is de-

scribed, it must be emphasized that alignment esti-mates using the Taxonomy Table are based on

curriculum units or entire courses, not individual les-sons. Thus, the analysis involved a group of objectives,

a variety of instructional activities, and, generally,more than one assessment (both formal and infor-mal). Having said this, the alignment process involvesfour steps.

First, each objective is placed in its appro-priate cell or cells of the Taxonomy Table. The

verbs and nouns included in the statement of theobjective are used to place the objective in the

proper cell. Second, each instructional activity (andaccompanying support materials) is similarly placedin its appropriate cell, based once again on cluesprovided by verbs and nouns included in the de-scription of the activity. Third, using clues fromincluded verbs and nouns, each assessment task(whether it be a performance assessment or one of

a series of test items) is placed in its appropriatecell. In the case of traditional tests, each item is

considered an assessment task and placed appro-

priately. Fourth, the three completed TaxonomyTables, one each derived from the analysis of theobjectives, instructional activities and materials,and assessments, are compared. Complete align-ment is evidenced when there are common cellsincluded on all three completed Taxonomy Tables.That is, the objective, instructional activities andmaterials, and assessments all fall into the samecell (e.g., understand conceptual knowledge). Par-tial alignment also exists. For example, the objec-tive, instructional activities and materials, andassessments may all fall into the same row (i.e.,type of knowledge), but differ in terms of the col-umn in which they are classified (i.e., cognitiveprocess category). Similarly, the objective, instruc-tional activities and materials, and assessments mayall fall into the same column, but differ in terms ofthe row in which they are classified. Partial align-ment provides potentially useful diagnostic infor-mation to teachers who want to improve theircurricular alignment. Moving an instructional ac-tivity from an emphasis on factual knowledge toan emphasis on procedural knowledge, or from

understand to analyze may be worth the effort ifalignment is substantially improved.

Before concluding, two final points must bemade. First, there is increasing evidence that estimat-ing curriculum alignment based on both knowledgeand cognitive processes is superior to other methodsof estimating alignment. This research is summarizedconcisely by Gamoran and his colleagues (1997)."Clearly, to predict student achievement gains fromknowledge of the content of instruction, a micro-level description of content that looks at cognitivedemands by [type of knowledge] is the most use-ful approach considered to date" (p. 331).

Second, alignment, using the Taxonomy Ta-ble, is based on considering what teachers intendin terms of student learning. This is particularlyimportant to keep in mind when analyzing instruc-tional activities. When examining instructional ac-tivities, one must ask, "What is the studentsupposed to learn from his or her participation inthis activity? What knowledge is to be acquired orconstructed? What cognitive processes are to beemployed?" Without answers to these questions, itis impossible to properly classify instructional ac-tivities in terms of the Taxonomy Table.

258

AndersonCurricular Alignment

The Value of Curriculum AlignmentEven if the reader is convinced that the Tax-

onomy Table is a useful tool for estimating andincreasing curriculum alignment, one question re-mains: Why should teachers be concerned aboutcurriculum alignment? At least four answers to thisquestion can be given.

The first is foreshadowed by the quotations withwhich this article began. Leigh Burstein was correct.We need to be more concerned with what studentshave learned as a result of their schooling experiencethan with what they know and can do regardless ofthe source of that knowledge or those skills. BillSchmidt and Curtis McKnight also were right. Pro-viding or denying opportunities to learn results in avery different education for different students. In sum-marizing the results of their research in New Zealand,Adrienne Alton-Lee and Graham Nuthall stated:"Our exploratory studies revealed that the curricu-lum excluded or marginalized people by race andgender . . . and that these processes led to differentexperiences for different . . . students" (p. 6). Or,in the words of Linda Winfield, opportunity to learn"emphasizes the importance of instruction andschool factors in student achievement, and it avoidsthe 'blame the victim' mentality which focusessolely on students" (p. 307). In this regard, there isincreasing evidence that the impact of opportunityto learn on student achievement is considerablygreater for minority students than for their "advan-taged" counterparts (Elia, 1994).

A second reason for the importance of cur-riculum alignment is that proper curriculum align-ment enables us to understand the differences inthe effects of schooling on student achievement.This is clearly evidenced by the research reportedby Gamoran and his colleagues. The study focusedon the success of so-called "transition" mathemat-ics courses in California and New York. These tran-sition courses were designed to bridge the gapbetween elementary and college-preparatory math-ematics and to provide access to more challengingand meaningful mathematics for students who en-ter high school with poor skills. Based on theirstudy, Gamoran et al. conclude that: "More rigor-ous content coverage distinguishes college-prepa-ratory math classes from general-track math classes,and it also shows that, consistent with previous

research, students learn more in the college-prepa-ratory classes" (p. 333). Consequently, "low-achieving high school students are capable oflearning much more than is typically demanded ofthem. The key is to provide a serious, meaningfulcurriculum: 'hard content for all students"' (p. 336).

A third reason for the importance of curricu-lum alignment is that poorly aligned curriculumresults in our underestimating the effect of instruc-tion on learning. Simply stated, teachers may be"teaching up a storm," but if what they are teach-ing is neither aligned with the state standards orthe state assessments, then their teaching is in vain.Tlhis is the educational equivalent of a tree fallingin the forest with no one around . . . no demon-stiated learning, no recognized teaching.

A fourth, and final, reason for the importanceof curriculum alignment stems from the currentconcern for educational accountability. Actually,current is probably not the correct word to usehere. Over the past quarter century, the responsi-bility for accountability has shifted from students(and their home backgrounds) to schools. Regard-less of the focus, however, curriculum alignmentis central to the success of accountability programs.More than 20 years ago, the NAACP filed a law-suit against the state of Florida (Debra P. v. Turl-ington, 1979) arguing that it was unconstitutionalto deny high school diplomas to students who hadnor: been given the opportunity to learn the materi-al covered on a test that was a requirement forgraduation. The court placed a four-year moratori-um on administration of the test for diploma deni-al, arguing that this additional period of time wasnecessary to allow students to have an opportunityto learn the necessary knowledge and skills. Al-though the emphasis has shifted from student toschool, the issue has not changed substantially. AsBa:ratz-Snowden (1993) has asserted: "If studentsare to be held accountable for their learning, thenschools must be held accountable as well by dem-onstrating that they provide students with opportu-nities to learn to meet the standards that have beenset" (p. 317).

ReferencesAlton-Lee, A., & Nuthall, G. (1992). Children's learn-

ing in classrooms: Challenges in developing a

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methodology to explain "opportunity to learn."Journal of Classroom Interaction, 27(2), 1-2.

Anderson, L., Evertson, C., & Brophy, J. (1979). Anexperimental study of effective teaching in firstgrade reading groups. Elementary School Journal,79, 193-223.

Baratz-Snowden, J.C. (1993). Opportunity to learn:Implications for professional development. Jour-nal of Negro Education, 62, 311-323.

Breitsprecher, C.H. (1991). Relative effects of verbalmediation, feedback monitoring, and alignment oncommunity college learners' achievement. Unpub-lished doctoral dissertation, University of San Fran-cisco. (ERIC Document Service No. ED333914)

Buckendahl, C.W., Plake, B.S., Impara, J.C., & Irwin,P.M. (2000, April). Alignment of standardizedachievement tests to state content standards: Acomparison of publishers' and teachers' perspec-tives. Paper presented at the annual meeting of theNational Council on Measurement in Education,New Orleans. (ERIC Document Service No.ED442829)

Burstein, L. (1993). Studying learning, growth, and in-struction cross-nationally: Lessons learned aboutwhy and why not engage in cross-national studies.In L. Burstein (Ed.), The IEA study of mathemat-ics III: Student growth and classroom processes(pp. 27-49). Oxford, England: Pergamon.

Burstein, L., & Winters, L. (1994, June). Workshop onmodels for collecting and using opportunity tolearn at the state level. Unpublished material, Al-buquerque, NM.

Cooley, W.W., & Leinhardt, G. (1980). The instruc-tional dimensions study. Educational Evaluationand Policy Analysis, 2, 7-25.

Elia, J. (1994). An alignment/transfer experiment withlow socioeonomic level students. Teacher Educa-tion Quarterly, 21, 113-124.

Gamoran, A., Porter, A.C., Smithson, J., & White, P.A.(1997). Upgrading high school mathematics in-struction: Improving learning opportunities forlow-achieving, low-income youth. EducationalEvaluation and Policy Analysis, 19, 325-338.

Good, T., Grouws, D.A., & Beckerman, T. (1978).Curriculum pacing: Some empirical data in math-ematics. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 10, 75-82.

Harskamp, E., & Suhre, C. (1994). Assessing the op-portunity to learn mathematics. Evaluation Review,18, 627-642.

Ippolito, T.J. (1990). An instructional alignment pro-gram for eighth grade criterion referenced mathobjectives. Unpublished manuscript. (ERIC Docu-ment Service No. ED326432)

Kendall, J.S. (1999). A report on the matches betweenthe South Dakota standards in mathematics andselected Stanford Achievement Tests. Unpublishedmanuscript. (ERIC Document Service No.ED447170)

Kim, H. (1993). A comparative study between an Amer-ican and a Republic of Korean textbook series'coverage of measurement and geometry content infirst through eighth grades. School Science andMathematics, 93(3), 123-126.

Leinhardt, G., Zigmond, N., & Cooley, W. (1981).Reading instruction and its effects. American Ed-ucational Research Journal, 18, 343-361.

McDonnell, L.M. (1995). Opportunity to learn as a re-search concept and a policy instrument. Educa-tional Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 17, 305-322.

Muthen, B., Huang, L-C., Jo, B., Khoo, S-T, Goff, G.,Novak, J., & Shih, J. (1995). Opportunity-to-learneffects on achievement: Analytical aspects. Edu-cational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 17, 371-403.

NC HELPS. (1999). Curriculum alignment. Unpub-lished manuscript. (ERIC Document Service No.ED439526)

Pickreign, J., & Capps, L.R. (2000). Alignment of ele-mentary geometry curriculum with current stan-dards. School Science and Mathematics, 100,243-245.

Schmidt, W.H., & McKnight, C.C.(1995). Surveyingeducational opportunity in mathematics and sci-ence: An international perspective. EducationalEvaluation and Policy Analysis, 17, 337-353.

Webb, N.L. (1999). Alignment of science and mathe-matics standards and assessments in four states.Unpublished manuscript. (ERIC Document ServiceNo. ED440852)

Winfield, L.F. (1993). Investigating test content andcurriculum content overlap to assess opportunityto learn. Journal of Negro Education, 62, 288-310.

it�

260

Additional Resources for Classroom UseKrathwohl, A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy:An Overview (pp. 212-218)

1. Hannah, L.S., & Michaelis, J.U. (1977). Acomprehensive framework for instructional ob-jectives: A guide to systematic planning andevaluation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

The authors posit three major categories: Intel-lectual Processes, which is their cognitive do-main; Skills, their psychomotor domain; andAttitudes and Values, their affective domain. Allthree are supported by the category of DataGathering, which includes Observing and Re-membering. Their Intellectual Processes categoryincludes many of the cognitive processes pre-sented in this issue of TIP. The authors claimthese Intellectual Processes are arranged in hi-erarchical order; they did not reverse the orderof evaluation and synthesis as done in the re-vised Taxonomy. Included are sample objectivesand test items for each category.

2. Hauenstein, A.D. (1988). A conceptualframeworkfor educational objectives: A holistic approach totraditional taxonomies. Lanham, MD: UniversityPress of America.

Like Hannah and Michaelis (above), Hauensteinsought to bring consistency to all three domainsby establishing a base definition and set of cri-teria for the Taxonomy. He also uses verbs orgerunds and many of the original criteria andcategories. As discussed in this issue, the au-thor inverts evaluation and synthesis. In addi-tion, he adds a new domain, the BehavioralDomain, which "capsulizes and summarizes theco-requisite objectives of the cognitive, affec-tive and psychomotor domains" (p. 115). Thetext also describes the process of learning overtime in five categories: acquisition, assimilation,adaptation, performance, and aspiration.

3. Marzano, R.J. (2001). Designing a new taxonomyof educational objectives. Thousand Oaks, CA:Corwin Press.

Presented here is Marzano's taxonomy, which isbased on a flow of processing model that succes-sively passes through three hierarchically relatedsystems of thinking, and constitutes the six levelsof what would be most comparable to our processdimension: Self system, Metacognitive system,and, finally, the four levels of the Cognitive sys-tem: Retrieval, Comprehension, Analysis, andKnowledge Utilization. The author applies thetaxonomy to curriculum assessment design.

Pintrich, The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge inLearning, Teaching, and Assessing (pp. 219-225)

1. Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (1999).fMow people learn: Brain, mind, experience, andschool. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

rhis book reviews recent cognitive science re-.search on learning and teaching in a nontechnicaland easily understood style. While there are fewspecific practical suggestions for teaching, thebook as a whole provides a good introductionof current cognitive science and its applicationsto learning and teaching.

2. Zimmerman, B.J., Bonner, S., & Kovach, R.(1996). Developing self-regulated learners: Be-yond achievement to self-efficacy. Washington,I)C: American Psychological Association.

This short guide for teachers is part of the Psy-chology in the Classroom series of the AmericanP'sychological Association, which focuses onapplying principles and findings from education-al psychology. It outlines how a self-regulatorylIarning cycle can be implemented to enablerniddle and secondary school students to developfive essential academic skills: planning and usingstudy time, understanding and summarizing textmaterial, note taking, anticipating and prepar-ing for exams, and effective writing.

3. Jones, B., Rasmussen, C., & Moffitt, M. (Eds.).(1997). Real-life problem solving: A collabora-tive approach to interdisciplinary learning.


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THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Winter 2002Promoting Thinking Through Peer Learning

Washington, DC: American Psychological As-sociation.

Part of a series on the application of education-al psychology to the classroom, this book dis-cusses problem-based learning and how toimplement it in the classroom. Because the bookand the series are aimed at teachers, there areplenty of pragmatic suggestions for classroominstruction.

Mayer, Rote Versus Meaningful Learning (pp.226-232)

1. Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian,P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich,P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A tax-

onomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A

revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational

objectives. New York: Longman.

Chapter 5, The Cognitive Process Dimension,provides an in-depth description of the cogni-tive processes involved in meaningful learning.

2. Mayer, R.E. (1999). The promise of educational

psychology, Volume I: Learning in the content

areas. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Mayer, R.E. (2001). The promise of educational

psychology, Volume II: Teaching for meaning-

ful learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PrenticeHall.

This two-volume set examines how childrenlearn from different methods of instruction. Itprofiles methods such as feedback, guided ex-ploration, cognitive apprenticeship, problem-based learning, and teaching of problem-solvingstrategies that allow learners to take what theyhave learned and apply it to new situations. Theauthor presents research on learning and instruc-tion for meaningful learning and discusses howto apply this information to teaching.

Raths, Improving Instruction (pp. 233-237)

1. Wiske, M.S. (Ed.). (1998). Teaching for under-

standing. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

This volume reports on the findings of ProjectZero, a Harvard Graduate School of Educationeffort to explore ways of teaching to higher levels

of objectives. While the book is indeed helpful,the complexity of teaching for understanding isunderscored in the narratives included here.

2. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understand-

ing by design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

A magnificent supplement to the accounts ofBloom's taxonomy, the narrative spells out howteachers can plan "backwards," beginning withthe assessment and working back toward thedesign of learning activities. Alignment is thekey here.

3. Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D.J., & Pollock, J.E.(2001). Classroom instruction that works. Alex-andria, VA: ASCD.

A key to improving instruction is for teachers toattempt to reduce the time it takes students to ac-quire the learning targets. This book describes nineteaching strategies that can do just that. While notall of the strategies are new-some might even befamiliar-there is a variety presented here to stim-ulate and challenge all teachers.

4. Carroll, J.B. (1963). A model of school learn-ing. Teachers College Record, 64, 723-733.

Teachers should be interested in reading theoriginal source of the model that has guided somany instructional improvement efforts for thepast 40 years or so. Carroll's model, elegant inits parsimony, suggests that teachers must findways to reduce the time students need to learnand increase the time students spend on task.The presentation here is clear and compelling.

5. Marzano, R.J. (2001). A step toward redesign-

ing Bloom's taxonomy. Thousand Oaks, CA:Corwin Press.

Marzano's book is an "attempt to articulate a tax-onomy of educational objectives that uses the bestavailable research and theory accumulated sincethe publication of Bloom's taxonomy" (p. viii).The heart of Marzano's taxonomy is his analysisof six levels of thinking: retrieval, comprehension,analysis, knowledge utilization, metacognition,and self-system thinking. He further divides in-formation into details and organizing ideas, andmental procedures into skills and process. In many

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Additional Resources

respects, Marzano's taxonomy is similar to therevision described in this issue of TIP. At the sametime, there are notable differences that should beevident to those reading both volumes.

Ferguson, Using the Revised Taxonomy to Planand Deliver Team-Taught, Integrated, Themat-ic Units (pp. 238-243)

1. Meinbach, A.M., Rothlein, L., & Fredericks,A.D. (2000). The complete guide to thematicunits: Creating the integrated curriculum (Rev.ed.). Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.

Aimed at teachers of primary through interme-diate grades, this guide is divided into two parts.Part I contains information about the value of athematic approach to teaching, practical strate-gies for success, options for assessment (includ-ing the use of portfolios), and suggestions forinvolving parents and the community. Part IIcontains outlines of 19 sample units for primaryand secondary classrooms accompanied by sto-ries that demonstrate their use in actual class-rooms for each sample unit. Teachers can eitheruse the projects as they are or adapt them to fittheir needs.

2. Short, K.G., Schroeder, J., Laird, J., Kauffman,G., Ferguson, M.J., & Crawford, K.M. (1996).Learning together through inquiry: From Co-lumbus to integrated curriculum. Portland, MA:Stenhouse Publishers.

This book tells the story of how six teachers col-laborated with each other and with their studentsto explore and negotiate curriculum as inquiry. Asa result of this process, the teachers found theyhad moved from textbook-based curriculum to the-matic units, ones in which students were involvedin a range of activities and a range of topics andissues. Students engaged in inquiries about Chris-topher Columbus, changes in families over time,personal and family history, slavery, human rights,cultures, space, and nature cycles.

Byrd, The Revised Taxonomy and ProspectiveTeachers (pp. 244-248)

1. Feinman-Nemser, S., & Parker, M.B. (1990).Making subject matter part of the conversation

or helping beginning teachers learn to teach.East Lansing, MI: National Center for Researchon Teacher Education.

Feinman-Nemser and Parker present the resultsof conversations with experienced and begin-ning teachers concerning the role of subjectmatter content in learning to teach. Based onthese conversations, the authors identified fouraspects of learning to teach academic content:(a) deepening one's own understanding of sub-ject matter, (b) learning to think about academ-ic content from the student's perspective, (c)learning to represent subject matter in appropri-ate and engaging ways, and (d) learning to or-ganize students for the purposes of teaching andlearning academic content.

2. Feinman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparationto practice: Designing a continuum to strengthenand sustain teaching. Teachers College Record,103, 1013-1055.

The author proposes a curriculum for teacherlearning over time. She examines the "fit" amongconventional teacher education, induction intothe profession, and continual professional de-velopment, with an eye on the challenges ofimproving one's teaching during one's career.

.Feinman-Nemser examines the central tasks ofteacher preparation, induction, and professionaldevelopment; how well conventional approach-es to teacher education address these tasks; andpromising programs and practices at each stageof learning.

Airasian and Miranda, The Role of Assessmentin the Revised Taxonomy (pp. 249-254)

1. Airasian, P.W. (2000). Classroom assessment:Concepts and applications (4th ed.). New York:MJcGraw-Hill.

Airasian conceives of classroom assessment morebroadly than the authors of many other classroomassessment texts. The focus is not only on theassessment needs of testing, grading, interpretingstandardized tests, and performance assessments,but also on assessment concerns in organizing aclassroom at the start of school, planning and im-plementing instruction, and strategies of teacher

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THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Winter 2002Promoting Thinking Through Peer Learning

self-reflection. Airasian views classroom assess-ment as an everyday, ongoing, integral part ofteaching, not something that is separated fromlife in classrooms. The organization of the textfollows the natural progression of teacher deci-sion making-from organizing the class as alearning community to planning and conductinginstruction to the formal evaluation of learning,and, finally, to grading.

2. Stiggins, R.J. (2001). Student-involved class-

room assessment (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River,NJ: Prentice Hall.

Using a jargon-free writing style, Stiggins showsteachers how to create high-quality classroomassessments and use them to build student con-fidence, thereby maximizing (not just document-ing) student achievement. This emphasis is onwhat teachers need to know to manage day-to-day classroom assessment effectively and effi-ciently. The author offers practical guidelineson how to construct all types of assessments,providing clear and understandable explanationsof how to match achievement targets to assess-ment methods. Traditional concepts of validityand reliability are integrated within his overallassessment framework.

Anderson, Curricular Realignment: A Re-exam-ination (pp. 255-260)

1. English, F.W., & Steffy, B.E. (2001). Deep cur-riculum alignment: Creating a level playing field

for all children on high-stakes tests of educa-

tional accountability. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow

Press, Inc.

English and Steffy explore the flaws in state-mandated testing, advocating a more compre-

hensive approach to teaching and testing. Thishighly practical book helps educators design adeeply aligned curriculum that produces academicresults and a level playing field for all students.Each chapter covers principles of testing andcurriculum building, and concludes with asummary of the key concepts presented. The re-sults of various studies are surveyed, ethical di-lemmas involved in testing are discussed, and astep-by-step guide to pedagogical parallelismand alignment is presented.

2. Herman, J.L., Klein, D.C., & Abedi, J. (2000).Assessing students' opportunity to learn: Teacherand student perspectives. Educational Measure-ment: Issues and Practices, 19(4), 16-24.

Herman, Klein, and Abedi explore various meth-ods of assessing opportunity to learn, using bothteacher and student reports. They investigate theintegrity of various dimensions of opportunityto learn, analyze the relationship between teacherand student estimates of opportunity to learn,and draw implications for policy and practice.The conceptual link between opportunity to learnand test validity is explored and recommenda-tions are offered.

3. Relearning by Design web sitewww.relearning.org

This website, initiated by Grant Wiggins, fo-cuses on performance assessment, rubrics forevaluating the quality of student performances,and the way in which assessment informationcan be used to inform teachers and improve in-struction. This is an excellent resource for teach-ers who are interested in improving theirknowledge and skills in the area of the nexus ofinstruction and assessment.

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http://www.relearning.org

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TITLE: Revising Bloom’s TaxonomySOURCE: Theory into Practice 41 no4 Aut 2002

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