I am working my way through this new book on Business Education, and very
good it is too (so far). On p. 88 (& following) there is a discussion of
Bloom's Taxonomy. The following thoughts occur to me:-
There is a close resemblance between Bloom and the AOs we teach to.
Synthesis is also mentioned in Bloom, and although it has formally largely
disappeared from assessment, it is nonetheless a key skill of pretty much
any academic endeavour. It is inherent in the synoptic paper. All
cognitive skills are context-dependent, and so need explicit treatment
within any given field eg Marketing, or Fiscal Policy. The
synoptic/synthetic links between topics need further and separate
development.
A4L (Assessment for Learning cf. Black & Williams) explicitly uses this
approach although different terminology is used. That is to say, before any
task a student should be told what, exactly, is being assessed. The task is
'marked' to that criterion only, and feedback given to the student
accordingly. It seems to me a modest adjustment to use the AOs (where
appropriate) as these explicit criteria, and to feedback to students
accordingly. Student progress can be tracked and monitored (on paper,
preferably) under the heading of each AO. I would guess there is an
assumption that student progress will be higher, at any given moment, in AO1
than in AO2, which in turn is higher than AO3, and with AO4 bringing up the
rear. The appropriate weightings can then be used to generate an 'emerging
grade' which not only shows at what level the student is performing at that
time, but also which is the area/AO primarily hoding the student back.
This, in turn, can be used to generate student targets.
The benefits of such an approach seem to me to be:-
1) The student better understands the assessment system.
2) The student understands their current position in the assessment
'hierarchy'.
3) The student understands what to do next.
This last point will appeal to those of you who are fans of Vygotsky.
But, the weakness of such an approach, taken as described here, is that it
ignores important and specific barriers to student access to the curriculum.
Of these the most obvious are Numeracy, and even more importantly, Academic
Literacy. These barriers can be specifically planned for in the collective
and general planning through the SoW. Individual issues should be picked up
in A4L and individual support and targets generated.
All these analyses focus on cognitive development. This assumes the
students have satisfactory emotional/affective stances to their studies.
This is, of course, a risky assumption. But that's a topic for another day.
As I plan to use this system starting next week, I would be grateful if
anyone could point out to me any flaws in this approach.
Richard Bowett
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