Knowledge

Knowledge Based Teaching

My use of the word “knowledge” in referring to school methodology is derived from “Bloom’s Taxonomy”. If you are not familiar with this core educational theory, I suggest a search of the Internet. Bloom’s Taxonomy has six categories of learning. The lowest level is "knowledge", then we move up the ladder to "comprehension", "application", "analysis", "synthesis", and at the very top "evaluation". Schools work largely at the lowest rung in this educational hierarchy. This isn’t to say that there is no attempt to teach any of the other categories. The state of Michigan has worked hard to require teachers to test for “comprehension”. Some “application” is used in examples, but anything beyond this has been a very difficult struggle for the State. They have tried, but I don’t feel they have been very successful.

Additionally, the problem is compounded by the same “knowledge“ style of teaching at the university level. I consider this a serious problem, although an in depth analysis is outside the scope of this paper. Anyone connected in any way to a university has heard the horror stories of poor teaching by faculty and graduate students. The problem is that faculty and graduate students are evaluated and promoted based almost solely on their ability to do research, and bring grant money to the university. Teaching ability plays almost no role in one’s promotion or tenure track evaluations. Small universities are somewhat better than large big ten style universities, but faculty are hired based on their PhD or sometimes MS degree. There is nothing in a PhD or MS program that prepares individuals to teach. So although universities are the storehouse of information on how to teach, their motivations are financial as I stated previously, and so will be the last place good teaching styles are going to be put in place. I remember talking with a Chemistry professor at a major university, who was chair of the graduate program. He told me that anyone could teach any grade. He further indicated it was dumb for there to even be an education department, because there was no information they could provide him with that would make him a better teacher. When I later spoke with those students who had him for a class, they indicated he was an awful teacher. Although all faculty are not this bad, the preponderance of faculty fall into his category. The sad part is money is funneled to universities instead of organizations like Wonderama who would provide superior educational programs. After all we “use” current educational theory because it is our business.

If you are interested in this thread , I suggest going to the following website for more information, http://www.ntlf.com/FTPSite/issues/v13n4/high.htm . It contains an excellent research paper on this subject using university engineering students. I did get a good chuckle when I saw that the paper was written by a professor at a university in India. It would never fly as a research topic in the States.