Discussion

What are some high level thinking questions you could ask on a maths test?

Tutorial Three

1.     By providing examples explain how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs relates to a student's motivation to study well?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory. This theory is very much important in student motivation. It talks about human needs. The most important needs must be met before we can strive toward the next level. The needs are psychological needs, safety needs, belonging and love needs, esteem and self-actualization.

The first psychological needs are safety and security and love and belonging needs are the in the deficit needs. These needs are the needs that every child and human has to build and fulfilled before growth can occur.

Psychological needs include the most basic needs that a child is needed to have when they go to school. It includes food, water, shelter, clothes, sleep, rest, and physical comfort. If this psychological needs are not met or fulfilled what will happen to the students? This is the most important need to a child's ability to learn. If this need is not fulfilled the child cannot concentrate in class. Whether the student is very good or intelligent he/she cannot concentrate in the class.

For an example a student in a class was very hungry. He came from home with the hungry stomach. The student has no power to do any activity in class. He/she is not concentrating in the class because his or her mind is not in the class. He or she was not able to do any activity because of the hungry. The thing he or she will do is thinking about to have a food. The student is not in the position to think about something else except the food.

Child needs the protection from their parents, teachers and peers. For an example if a child is being bullied or being shouted by her parent the child will not have the confidence to participate in classroom activity and learning. In this case the teacher’s responsibility is to make the classroom environmentally safe from everything like physically, mentally and emotionally.

If a student is not getting love and belonging they will feel lonely. They will be very unfriendly with other students. The student will not have the freedom to do his or her things. If they are alone, rejected and not getting love they will be rootless and don't like to be with others. So this will affect the student motivation to learn.

If the student deficit need is effectively met then the student will be ready and try to learn. By forming a community of learners by showing the self-actualizing activities like following the creative interests and wishes and appreciating the different gifts that each child bring and show. Self-actualization will become the final instructional aim for all the students. So the student become equally as lifelong learners.

2. Explain why morality is a concern for students at school. Provide examples. 

Morality is beliefs about right and wrong or good and bad behavior. It is a very big concern for students at school. Students start their school at the age of six or younger than six. After that student finish their o level and A level study. How many years, months, weeks, days and hours student spent their whole life in school? Student spent their half of life in school. So it is very important to the students have a good moral values. If the school is not teaching the student is not teaching the child about morality will the student have any knowledge or understanding of right or wrong? 

For an example a child is not have the thinking or the knowledge of obeying the traffic rule what will happen the child comes after finishing the school. How the child will know and have the understanding of the good or bad things if the school has not taught the child. So he/she will not have the beliefs of right or wrong.

Schools need to teach the child about every important morality that every student needs to have in their life time.

Bullying is a very common thing in every school. For an example in a class there is a girl who wears a very big glass because of her eye problem. Then there was a boy who always teases students. One day that boy calls that girl by naming magnifying glass. All other students was laughing and the girl was very sad and felt shy. but the teacher only told that boy to stop that and go to his place. In this situation the teacher has to tell and teach the boy about bullying is not a good thing to do and advice the child not to repeat that. if the child don’t teach the student will bully not only for that girl for others also.so it is very important to have a good moral values and beliefs in school. 

Discussion

This is the Bloom taxonomy of old version and the new version.What do you think what are the differences between the two versions of Bloom Taxonomy? 

Benjamin Bloom

APPLICATION OF THE THEORY TO THE CLASSROOM/TEACHING

Knowledge	·         observation and recall of information ·         knowledge of dates, events, places ·         knowledge of major ideas ·         mastery of subject matter ·         Question Cues: list, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label, collect, examine, tabulate, quote, name, who, when, where, etc.
Comprehension	·         understanding information ·         grasp meaning ·         translate knowledge into new context ·         interpret facts, compare, contrast ·         order, group, infer causes ·         predict consequences ·         Question Cues: summarize, describe, interpret, contrast, predict, associate, distinguish, estimate, differentiate, discuss, extend
Application	·         use information ·         use methods, concepts, theories in new situations ·         solve problems using required skills or knowledge ·         Questions Cues: apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete, illustrate, show, solve, examine, modify, relate, change, classify, experiment, discover
Analysis	·         seeing patterns ·         organization of parts ·         recognition of hidden meanings ·         identification of components ·         Question Cues: analyze, separate, order, explain, connect, classify, arrange, divide, compare, select, explain, infer
Synthesis	·         use old ideas to create new ones ·         generalize from given facts ·         relate knowledge from several areas ·         predict, draw conclusions ·         Question Cues: combine, integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create, design, invent, what if?, compose, formulate, prepare, generalize, rewrite
Evaluation	·         compare and discriminate between ideas ·         assess value of theories, presentations ·         make choices based on reasoned argument ·         verify value of evidence ·         recognize subjectivity ·         Question Cues assess, decide, rank, grade, test, measure, recommend, convince, select, judge, explain, discriminate, support, conclude, compare, summarize

Benjamin Bloom

THEORY

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification system developed in 1956 by education psychologist Benjamin Bloom to categorize intellectual skills and behavior important to learning. Bloom identified six cognitive levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, with sophistication growing from basic knowledge-recall skills to the highest level, evaluation.

Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1948 by psychologist Benjamin Bloom and several colleagues. Originally developed as a method of classifying educational goals for student performance evaluation, Bloom’s Taxonomy has been revised over the years and is still utilized in education today. The original intent in creating the taxonomy was to focus on three major domains of learning: cognitive, affect, and psycho motor. The cognitive domain covered “the recall or recognition of knowledge and the development of intellectual abilities and skills”; the affect domain covered “changes in interest, attitudes, and values, and the development of appreciations and adequate adjustment”; and the psycho motor domain encompassed “the manipulative or motor-skill area.”¹ Despite the creators’ intent to address all three domains, Bloom’s Taxonomy applies only to acquiring knowledge in the cognitive domain, which involves intellectual skill development.

The original Bloom’s Taxonomy contained six developmental categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The first step in the taxonomy focused on knowledge acquisition and at this level, students recall, memorize, list, and repeat information. In the second tier, students classify, describe, discuss, identify, and explain information. Next, students demonstrate, interpret, and write about what they're learned and solve problems. In the subsequent step, students compare, contrast, distinguish, and examine what they've learned with other information, and they have the opportunity to question and test this knowledge. Then students argue, defend, support, and evaluate their opinion on this information.

In the 1990s, one of Bloom’s students, Lorin Anderson, revised the original taxonomy. In the amended version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the names of the major cognitive process categories were changed to indicate action because thinking implies active engagements. Instead of listing knowledge as a part of the taxonomy, the category is divided into different types of knowledge: factual, conceptual, procedural, and meta cognitive. This newer taxonomy also moves the evaluation stage down a level and the highest element becomes “creating.”

Benjamin Bloom

CAREER HISTORY

• From 1943 to 1959, Bloom served as University Examiner. In this position, he developed tests to determine if undergraduates had mastered material necessary for them to receive their bachelor’s degrees.
• In 1948, he and a group of colleagues with the American Psychological Association began discussions that led to the taxonomy of educational goals, a system of classification that frequently is called “Bloom’s Taxonomy.”
• His 1956 book on the subject, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain deals with knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. Bloom set forth a hierarchy of learning, beginning with factual knowledge and leading through comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
• The second book in the series, for which he was a co-author, Taxonomy of Education Objections, Volume II: The Affective Domain was published in 1964. It helped educators understand the importance of attitudes in the development of learning.
• Also in 1964, Bloom published Stability and Change in Human Characteristics. That work, based on a number of longitudinal studies, led to an upsurge of interest in early childhood education, including the creation of the Head Start program, Stodolsky said.
• Bloom showed that many physical and mental characteristics of adults can be predicted through testing done while they are still children. For example, he demonstrated that 50 percent of the variations in intelligence at age 17 can be estimated at age 4. He also found that early experiences in the home have a great impact on later learning.
• Bloom summarized his work in a 1980 book titled All Our Children Learning, which showed from evidence, gathered in the United States and abroad that virtually all children can learn at a high level when appropriate practices a
  re undertaken in the home and school.
• In the later years of his career, Bloom turned his attention to talented youngsters and led a research team that produced the book Developing Talent in Young People, published in 1985.
• “What we found was that the band of people who are capable of achieving great talent is actually quite broad,” Bloom said at the time. “The few who have achieved it had similar experiences.”
• The people who reach top levels in athletics, arts and academics are those who work hard and have challenging but affectionate parents and top teachers, Bloom found.
• Bloom, which joined the University faculty in 1944, was born in Lansford, Penn., and received a B.A. from Pennsylvania State University in 1935 and an M.S. from Pennsylvania State, also in 1935. He received his PhD. from the University of Chicago in 1942.

Benjamin Bloom

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Benjamin Bloom

Benjamin S. Bloom was born on February 21, 1913, in Lansford, Pennsylvania. As a youth, Bloom had an insatiable curiosity about the world. He was a voracious reader and a thorough researcher. He read everything and remembered well what he read. As a child in Lansford, Pennsylvania, the librarian would not allow him to return books that he had checked out earlier that same day until he was able to convince her that he had, indeed, read them completely.

Bloom was especially devoted to his family (his wife, Sophie, and two sons), and his nieces and nephews. He had been a handball champion in college and taught his sons both handball and Ping-Pong, chess, how to compose and type stories, as well as to invent.

He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935, and a PhD. in Education from the University of Chicago in March 1942. He became a staff member of the Board of Examinations at the University of Chicago in 1940 and served in that capacity until 1943, at which time he became university examiner, a position he held until 1959.

He served as educational adviser to the governments of Israel, India, and numerous other nations.

What Bloom had to offer his students was a model of an inquiring scholar, someone who embraced the idea that education as a process was an effort to realize human potential, and even more, it was an effort designed to make potential possible. Education was an exercise in optimism. Bloom’s commitment to the possibilities of education provided inspiration for many who studied with him.^[1]

Benjamin Bloom died Monday, Sept. 13, 1999 in his home in Chicago. He was 86.

Tutorial One

Question 1

By providing examples discuss how a teacher can help become lifelong learners?

• At first teaching has to be teacher’s passion. They have to show their student how much fun is learning. Keeping the learning or the learning environment joy and happy should be the first importance of a teacher. When teachers ideal excitement about learning, students will see learning as something positive to be imitated. In turn they will hopefully become life-long learners themselves.
• If we can have “students see our passions – it gives them proof that we enjoy learning.” (Thomas, 2007)
• Teachers have to give their student the opportunity to show their own skill, their own interest. For an example if there is a student who is having the difficulties in speaking but he is very good in drawing. So teachers have to give the opportunity to the student to show his/her talent.
• Moreover teachers have to know more options to engage students who don’t respond to classroom instruction.
• Teacher should teach the ability and aspiration to become a lifelong learner.
• You need to teach your students to start questions or suggestion about a particular topic.
• To be an active investigator will help children to become lifelong learners. The students will need to use a variety of methods to find, collect, sort, and record information.
• Teachers will need to help their students use a variety of plans to study and make information. From their own research they will understand whether the information they have find is useful or not.
• Teacher can help their students by seeing their learning styles, their prior knowledge, and their strengths and weaknesses. This will help their children plan and form their own thinking.
• Teachers have to give their students learning experiences that deal with real world situations. For an example one problem to be solved could be how to help recycle items used at your school. Students could investigate, analyze, and propose corrective measures the school could do to recycle.

      So these types of thing will help the teacher to help become life long learners. 

Question 2

In what ways do you think teaching has become more professional than it was in the past? Justify your answer with examples from the profession?

• I think teaching has become very professional in different ways. The teaching, curriculum, teachers, students, parents, methods, materials and the services etc. has changed a lot. 
• Now the curriculum is not only made to teach the students what the book has to teach. In early days school will make the curriculum according to the book. They will not think about other curricular activities, the life skill that the students will need. Now that has changed. 
• In the past most of the school have unprofessional teachers. There will be no qualified teachers. Most of the teachers who has completed their studying up to grade 7 or the teachers have completed O level. But now there is the qualified and the professional teachers in most of the school. Who has completed their degree, PhD and have experience on teaching. 
• The teaching methods have changed a lot. By discussing, debating, researching, doing experiments, gaming and playing etc. But in the past teaching is only done by the book. It means what has written in the book only the teachers will teachers and the students also learn from only the book. 
• Earlier teaching has done using the voshufilaa or the black board and chalk. There will be one table for a group of students, wood tables and chairs. But now it has changed. Now most of the schools use white board and marker and teach using IT. There will be a plastic chair and a table for each student. 
• Using the internet student can study, do their home works and also do many researches. And the teachers can find the things the information worksheets using the internet. 
• Now there are more workshops and awareness programs on teaching for teachers parents and students. Moreover there are online websites, workshops, discussion forum to encourage the teachers to teach their students in professional ways. 
• In every week there will be meeting in between teachers and parents to tell the parents about their students studying, behavior and the work of the teacher. So that the parents will understand how much their child is studying and the teacher is teaching. 
• In the past students will only go to edhuruge or their island school. But now there are now different learning places, colleges, universities and private school. Because of this their will a challenges in every school, better and better goals in every schools