Encouraging Higher-Order Thinking in General Chemistry by Scaffolding Student Learning Using Marzano’s Taxonomy

Abstract

An emphasis on higher-order thinking within the curriculum has been a subject of interest in the chemical and STEM literature due to its ability to promote meaningful, transferable learning in students. The systematic use of learning taxonomies could be a practical way to scaffold student learning in order to achieve this goal. This work proposes the use of Marzano's Taxonomy of Learning. Because it offers a functional way to distinguish lower from higher-order thinking, the taxonomy is particularly useful to instructors interested in helping students develop these skills. We outline and provide examples of how it was used in constructing Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), class activities, and assessments for a first semester general chemistry course. Preliminary observations of the impact of this methodology on student learning are presented.

The effect of student-centered teaching and problem-based learning on academic achievement in science

“…Nelson (2012) found that students recognized the academic value of technology as it helped them to access a wide range of resources, and take control of their learning. Toledo and Dubas (2016) proposed the use of Marzano's taxonomy of learning, because it offers a functional way to distinguish lower to higher-order thinking, and is particularly useful to instructors interested in helping students develop higher-order thinking skills in science. Godor (2016) argued that student learning approaches research has been built upon the notions of deep and surface learning.…”

Using model-based scaffolds to support students solving context-based chemistry problems

“…The results show that instructor-generated prompts from an expert or teacher made the students solve the chemistry problems significantly better than students who developed their own peer-prompts or students who at first developed their own prompts and thereafter revised them with help from the instructor. In a US study on general chemistry at university level, a hierarchical taxonomy was used to design a course aiming to scaffold students' learning through encouraging higher-order thinking (Toledo & Dubas, 2016). Early observations from that study indicate that students evaluated the different instruments implemented in their courses (scaffolding instruction, scaffolding assessment, and feedback) quite positively, claiming that all course materials had a positive impact on their learning.…”

A New Assessment of Hocs-Oriented Learning for Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Abilities by Marzano’s Taxonomy

“…There are four distributions of students' hierarchical cognitive levels --retrieval, comprehension, analysis, and knowledge utilization in Marzano's spectrum (Marzano & Kendall, 2007) with brain-based learning. Toledo and Dubas (2016) unanimously noticed that Marzano's taxonomy could describe students' cognitive levels of lower-order and higher-order thinking abilities clearly with the framework of spectrum. Students' lower-order thinking abilities included both retrieval and compression tasks during which students were required to obtain the rule-based learning, the accurate reasoning information and integrated comprehensive understanding.…”

“…The basic framework of the HOCS-centered diagnostic evaluation instrument (HODEI) follows four hierarchical levels in Marzano's taxonomy spectrum. Four hierarchical cognitive levels are included as retrieval, comprehension, analysis, and knowledge utilization shown in Figure 1 (Toledo & Dubas, 2016). The detailed discussions of four hierarchical cognitive levels, consist of level 1 (L1) as a retrieval task, level 2 (L2) as a comprehension task, level 3 (L3) as an analysis task and level 4 (L4) as a knowledge utilization task.…”

“…All students know that chemistry is one of the four basic constituents in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields to pave their comprehensive foundation for hierarchical thinking abilities step by step. Accordingly, there are many advantages on students' STEM developments in recognitive abilities, critical thinking, and problem-solving (Cordray et al 2009;Toledo & Dubas, 2016). The ideal education of science goal should put emphasis on solving students' conceptual problems and getting meaningful knowledge in terms of hierarchical levels of reasoning skills.…”