go through Terry Heck
How do you tell if a student really understands something?
They learn early on to play games – tell teachers and/or test what they “want to know”, and even the best assessments leave something behind. (In fact, most of the time students simply don’t know what they don’t know.)
Of course, the idea of understanding is at the heart of all learning, and problem solving is one of the three pillars of formal learning environments and education.
1. What do they need to know (standards)?
2. What (and how) do they currently understand (evaluate)?
3. How can they best learn about what they currently don’t understand (planning learning experiences and mentoring)?
But how do we know if they know? And what is ‘it’?
understood as ‘it’
On the face of it, there’s something wrong with the word “it.” It sounds vague. trouble. uncertain. But everyone knows what it is.
“It” is essentially something to learn, and it can be a scary thing for both teachers and students. “It” is everything, described in such intimidating terms as goals, objectives, proficiencies, tests, exams, grades, failures, and successes.
In terms of content, “it” can be almost anything: a fact, discovery, habit, skill or general concept, from a mathematical theory to a scientific process, a historical figure’s importance to the author’s purpose in the text.
So if a student gets it, what else can they do beyond pure academic performance? There are many existing taxonomies and features, from Bloom to Understanding by Design 6 aspects of understanding.
The following operations are set up as a linear taxonomy, from most basic to most complex. The best part about it is its simplicity: most operations take just a few minutes to complete in class, requiring no complicated planning or extended exam time.
Understanding can be assessed in minutes by using quick diagrams, concept maps, T-charts, conversations, pictures or short responses in journals, quick face-to-face collaboration, exit slips or via digital/social media, helping to replace testing and consternation with an atmosphere of assessment. It can even be displayed on the class website or hung in the classroom to help guide independent learning and allow students to check their understanding.
How this understanding taxonomy works
I’ll be writing more about it soon and converting it into a more graphical form; both of which are crucial to using it. (Update: I’m also creating a course for teachers to help use it.) Now, I’d say it can be used to guide planning, assessment, course design, and independent learning. Or develop Critical thinking questions for any content area.
The “Heick” taxonomy of learning aims to be simple, arranged into (mostly) independent tasks, ranging from less to more complexity. That is, students do not need to demonstrate the “highest” level of understanding—which misses the point. Any ability to perform these tasks is a sign of understanding. The more tasks students can complete, the better, but all “ticked boxes” are evidence that students “get it.”
36 Thinking Strategies to Help Students Deal with Complexity
Heike’s Taxonomy of Learning
Area 1: Parts
- explain or briefly describe
- Label its major and minor parts
- Evaluate its most and least important characteristics
- effectively deconstruct or “disassemble” it
- Give examples and non-examples
- Separate it into categories, or as items within broader categories
Sample theme
revolutionary war
Example tips
Explain the Revolutionary War in simple terms (e.g., inevitable rebellion created a new nation).
Identify the major and minor “parts” of the Revolutionary War (e.g., economics and propaganda, soldiers, and tariffs).
Evaluate the Revolutionary War and identify its least and most important features (e.g., causes and effects versus city names and skirmishes)
See 20 Critical Thinking Teaching Questions
Area 2: Holistic
- Explain it in terms of micro details and macro context
- Create a chart and embed it in a context of your choice
- Explain how it is and is not useful both practically and intellectually
- Feel free to play with it
- utilize it in part and in its entirety
- Modify it professionally and explain the impact of any modifications
Area 3: Interdependence
- Explain how it relates to similar and dissimilar ideas
- Instruct others to use it
- Explain it in different and accurate ways to novices and experts
- Explain exactly how and where others might misunderstand it
- Compare it to other similar and dissimilar ideas
- Identify similar but different ideas, concepts, or situations
Domain 4: Functions
- Apply it in unfamiliar situations
- Create an accurate analogy to convey its function or meaning
- Analyze the best points of its practicality
- Get creative and repurpose it
- Know when use it
- rationally explain its origin
Domain 5: Abstraction
- Insightfully or skillfully showing off its nuances
- Criticize what it might “miss” or be “dishonest” or incomplete
- Debate its “truth” as a proponent or opponent
- explain its elegance or ruggedness
- Analyze its objectivity and subjectivity and the relationship between them
- Design its sequel, extension, follow-up or evolution
Domain 6: Self
- Learn this topic independently in the future
- Ask specific, insightful questions about it
- Recall or narrate one’s own learning sequence or time sequence (metacognition) to understand it
- Able to use it easily in different contexts and situations
- Find out what they still don’t understand
- Analyze changes in self-perception due to understanding
Advanced understanding
This taxonomy was also created with reference to Understanding by Design’s 6facets of Understanding, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Marzano’s New Taxonomy; Learning Taxonomy for Understanding
