Quality of higher education through criterion referencing and cognitive competencies of Bloom's Taxonomy: A concept Note
In India, at the primary school level, Bloom Taxonomy based cognitive pedagogy in the form of competency based education has been used by the NCERT and the Lok Jumblish Project in Rajasthan up to grade level five. On experimental basis, some private schools and the Kendriya Vidyalayas, schools in Gujarat have tried the competency based education.
At senior school level, there has been research work by individual scholars to implement the competency based education for three months in a few subject areas and found the strategy significantly efficacious. However, the culture of research-into-action is missing in India since it requires expert work at curriculum designing, teacher training and follow-up. Nonetheless, it is a worthwhile challenge, which autonomous institutions being quality-conscious can take up.
My classroom research experience in competency based teaching of physics for three months at senior secondary level and lesson studies at the under-graduate levels informs that at higher education level, the Bloom's taxonomy is to be related to the following cognitive levels for achieving mastery learning or criterion referenced learning.
Analysis at conceptualization level: Characteristics or attributes/ variables, functions, relationships between variables,
Application for trans-disciplinary overlapping and boundary-breaking by uniting knowledge areas as well as multiple intelligence
Evaluation through critical thinking skills, reflection, review work as well as self-learning skills and self-evaluation skills
Creation / creativity / design thinking / knowledge construction through researching skills, assignment work, illustration / visual thinking, technical writing skills, language arts
The foregoing cognitive levels can be turned into monthly study-units based competency statements for a given subject at higher education level to be implemented trimester-wise to earn credits on assignment-evaluation basis. This a mental-labour intensive work and team work. A special pedagogy unit consisting an expert, science educator and technical language experts are required to work full time to design curriculum, teacher training and follow-up till the curriculum becomes an inegral part of classroom processes
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