Critical Thinking in the Management Classroom: Bloom's Taxonomy as a Learning Tool

Abstract

This article discusses the use of Bloom's taxonomy as a metacognitive framework for the student-centered management class, or what contemporary education researchers call scaffolding. The taxonomy is a six-level classification system that uses observed student behavior to infer the level of cognitive achievement. The article surveys thinking within general education and within management education, which draws on Bloom's taxonomy, and then describes suggested uses of the taxonomy. Empirical evaluation of its effect on student achievement follows, as do thoughts about ways colleagues might use this tool to empower their management students as self-responsible learners in the classroom. . We thank Bill McKeachie for his advice and encouragement and, along with him, Ben Massey-academics whose contributions serve as reminders of the rich and useful worlds beyond our specialty areas. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive advice, support, and patience. Each author's contributions were equally important to this research.

The Effect of Synchronous and Asynchronous Participation on Students' Performance in Online Accounting Courses

“…Evaluation represents behaviours indicating the highest level of cognitive development in the taxonomy. Extending Bloom's taxonomy to student participation leads to the following: students who engage in analysis, synthesis and evaluative discussions (i.e., functioning at the higher quality of learning levels) are more likely to perform better than students who are only memorising, comprehending or simply applying concepts (Athanassiou et al 2003). Biggs (1976) developed an alternative framework for conceptualising students' behaviours in classroom settings.…”

Understanding the Cognition Process of the Students using the Internet as a Learning Resource

“…Nicholas Athanassiou & Mcnett (2003) using the cognitive taxonomy such as Bloom's to develop a metacognitive framework to facilitate a more student-centered and criticalthinking promoting learning activities. Abrami, P.C., Apollonia, S., & Rosenfield, (1997), also been adapted the Blooms' taxonomy to analyze the aspects of effective teaching.…”

“…A learning activity can be seen from how students gather information from the Internet and process them into a coherent knowledge for themselves. The processing of this information can affect how much someone's cognitive achievement could be (Athanassiou & Mcnett, 2003). Someone's cognitive achievement and performance can then be observed against the cognitive taxonomy to understand his/her level of achievement during the learning process.…”

From Rhetoric to Reality: Business Games as Educational Tools

“…The Original Taxonomy represented an effort to standardize the language of intellectual (learning) behavior. This construct is a one dimensional continuum, a cumulative hierarchical system of learning classification that uses observed student behavior to infer the level of student achievement, where more complex behaviors subsume the simpler behaviors (Athanassiou et al, 2003;Bloom, 1956;Krathwohl, 2002). The Revised Taxonomy augments this work.…”