Blog 10

Nathan Scarbrough

Week 10 Discussion: Promoting Cognitive Complexity in Graduate Written Work

                I found this to be a fitting article to read on the week our literature review is due.  It dropped some handy knowledge on me that I’ll be sure to keep in mind when writing my literature review.  This article centered on the concept that Bloom’s Theory of Taxonomy Level can be applied to help graduate students write better literature reviews (and technically promote cognitive complexity in any area).  Instructors often assume that complex cognitive skills learned in other setting will be applied to a written assignment.  This is not the case. While current graduate courses place an emphasis on conducting searches for information, analyzing research, and APA formatting, few of them assist students in the process of clearly defining a problem, summarizing previous work, identifying connections and patterns, and suggesting the next step for solving said problem.  Current articles provide information on how to better get your articles published, but none of them explain how to utilize higher-order thinking skills for the purposes of writing more advanced literature reviews. 

                Blooms Taxonomy Levels consist of six progressively more complex stages.  These include (sequentially) knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  The author suggests that to improve the complexity of graduate written work, a teacher must first analyze their previous work of a student to identify the current level (roughly) they are operating at, and then teach the skills necessary for them to reach the next level (then repeat until satisfied).  I will briefly describe the main features of each category to more accurately identify the distinguishing structures of each:

Knowledge: The author demonstrates a shallow understanding of the facts by being able to repeat them back in order (much like this list I’m making now...sigh).  Papers are organized by articles, not topics or themes.  There is little integration of exploration of the source.

Comprehension: The author shows a deeper understanding of the material by being more able to manipulate information and summarize.  That said it is similar to knowledge in that the author still makes some automatic assumptions and doesn’t consider quality of sources.  Furthermore its structure is similar in that the paper is still organized by articles instead of themes.

Application: The author demonstrates his/her ability to use learned material in new and concrete situations.  He/she makes connections between learned material and the topic at hand, but still doesn’t make distinctions based on the quality of information.  They must rely on authors of their studies to provide accurate information.  Like those in previous stages they still organized papers by article, not theme, but at least make explicit links to main points of paper.  They make few or no connections between articles.

Analysis: The author breaks down information into parts and recognizes the basic principles involved.  They identify patterns and themes and come to own conclusions.  However, they still lack the ability to articulate a method for evaluating information and therefore have difficulty dealing with contradictory findings in research.  They do not make the effort to link info from multiple sources.  Papers that fall into this category contain more detailed descriptions or analyses of sources.  They make an attempt that identifying emerging patterns, link source articles to main points of paper, and identify component parts of the source that support their argument.

Synthesis: Authors demonstrate the ability to put parts together to form a new whole, by integrating and combining ideas from multiple sources to form plan or proposal that is new to the individual.  Students in this stage still lack the ability to evaluate articles.  They are likely to pick data that supports their conclusions and downplay others.  Papers in this category show a significant structural difference in that their organization is based on themes, not articles.  They integrate various findings, determine main points of articles, and spread this information throughout the paper as it applies to arguments and ideas. 

Evaluation: This is the deepest level, in which authors demonstrate their ability to judge the value of material for a given purpose.   Authors use all other categories in their construction processes, and make conscious value judgments regarding the sources of their information. These students can view data objectively, and analyze research based off of specific criteria. They are better able to understand different results based off of different methodologies, and to understand that there are gray areas and a lack of clear answers sometimes.  Papers in this category are thematically organized and convincing, with well-thought out arguments that are well grounded in literature.  They include an analysis of source articles which include strengths AND limitations of data. These papers present both sides of the debate with minimum bias to draw conclusions logically based off of objective evaluations.

While Bloom’s Theory of Taxonomy Levels is supported by an overwhelming body of research, it is important to keep in mind that it is not the only way to improve one’s writing.  That being said, it is generally agreed upon that this theory is highly effective at improving cognitive complexity.  It is easy for most graduate students to understand and implement, as most students have reached the top level of cognitive complexity in some area in their lives, and therefore should not have much trouble identifying contributing factors and applying the same lessons to their writing.