FROM BLOOM TO MARZANO A

NEW TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL

OBJECTIVES FOR PLT?

As lawyers delivering Practical Legal Training (PLT) we generally bring

substantial professional experience and our own understandings of
professional skills, professional areas and practice areas to our teaching.
However many of us are not necessarily trained as educators. Also we
might carry within us some fairly strong prejudices about what constitutes
competent knowledge, skills and practices for an entry-level lawyer. I am
not going to drill into the national competency standards for entry-level
lawyers here; I will save that for another blog.
What I do want to discuss is the way we approach instruction for and
assessment of the competencies for entry-level lawyers.
Let me submit a proposition: We as instructors and assessors should
be ready, willing and able to give an account of how and why we
instruct, mentor and assess as we do.
A second proposition: Saying something like, it works for me or thats
how Ive always done it really is not an adequate answer when one is
called to account in the way described above.
We owe it to our law graduates, to the profession, to the regulators and to
ourselves to be able to account for our instructional design, teaching
methods and assessment.

The good news is that were not the first to confront this. Educators have
been tangling with these issues for a fairly long time.
In this blog I am going to introduce Marzano and Kendalls taxonomy of
educational objectives, and relate these to PLT. Some of this might seem
a bit technical or theoretical but I hope to demonstrate that adopting
these ideas can provide us with practical strategies for instructional
design, teaching and assessment.
In this blog I will confine myself to four levels of cognitive processes. I will
address meta-cognitive and self-system processes in another blog.

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Taxonomy is just another way of describing an arrangement or
classification of things, in this case educational things.
Possible the most well-known taxonomy in education is the work by Bloom
et al [1, 2].
Bloom identified domains of educational activities with categories of
educational activities within those domains:
Domain

Categories of Activities

Cognitive

Knowledge, Comprehension,
Application, Analysis,
Synthesis, Evaluation

Affective

Receiving, Responding,
Valuation, Organisation,
Internalisation

Psychomotor

Perception, Mindsets, Guided

Response, Mechanism,
Complex Overt Response,
Adaptation, Origination

In Blooms taxonomy the Cognitive domain describes a framework of

information processing through certain types of activities. The Affective
domain describes the interactions of the individual learner with those
cognitive activities.
It would be fair to say that Blooms Cognitive domain and its categories of
activities was the primary framework for designing formative and

summative assessments for over 50 years. Testing in education has

usually involved beginning with knowledge activities (testing recall) and
then progressing through comprehension, application, and so on with each
category perceived as requiring more complex cognitive activity.

Marzano and Kendall

Marzano and Kendall [3] (Marzano) have given Blooms taxonomy a bit of
working over. They reframe the three Domains and instead of categorizing
learning activities they describe six levels of processing knowledge.
Domains

Levels of Processing
Self System
Meta-cognitive System
Knowledge Utilisation
(Cognitive)

Information
Mental Procedures
Psychomotor Procedures

Analysis (Cognitive)
Comprehension (Cognitive)
Retrieval (Cognitive)

Each level of processing can operate within each of the three

domains.
The first four levels of processing are cognitive, beginning with Retrieval
the least complex, then moving upward with increasing complexity
through Comprehension, Analysis and Knowledge Utilisation.
The fifth level of processing, the Meta-cognitive System, involves the
learners specification of learning goals, monitoring of the learners own
process, clarity and accuracy of learning. Simply put involves the learners
organization of their own learning.
The sixth level of processing, the Self-System, involves the learners
examination of the Importance of the learning task and their self-efficacy.
It also involves the learners emotional response to the learning task and
their motivation regarding it.

Cognitive Levels

I will be dealing with the meta-cognitive and self-system levels of

processing in a later blog. For now, lets return to the four cognitive levels
of processing.

Retrieval (1)
Retrieval involves the recognition and recall of information and the
execution of mental procedures and psychomotor procedures.
For example:
Recognition in the Information Domain may involve the student being
asked to state whether a proposition is true or false.
Recall in the Information Domain may involve the student being asked to
produce a statement about a piece of information.
Execution in the Mental Procedures domain might require the student to
execute a procedure, such as a calculation, without significant error.

Comprehension (2)
Comprehension involves the integration and symbolization of knowledge.
Integration may involve the student being asked to identify the basic
structure of an item of information, mental procedure or psychomotor
procedure. Using conveyancing practice for examples:
The student must describe a relationship between the consideration
stated on the transfer of land, the price stated in the sale contract, and
another document at settlement.
Symbolisation may involve the student being asked to produce an
accurate symbolic representation of information, mental procedure or
psychomotor procedure. For example:
The student must produce a flow diagram showing the steps undertaken
concerning a transfer of land document from the point of its creation to its
lodgement at land registry.

Analysis (3)

Analysis involves matching and classifying activities, analysing errors,

generalising from foundational knowledge and specifying logical
consequences.
Matching may involve identification of material similarities and
differences in information. For example:
Describe the similarities and differences between a transfer of land
created for transferees taking as joint proprietors and one created for
those taking as tenants in common.
Classifying involves identification of categories including subordinate
and super ordinate categories. For example:
Identify and explain the category of right or restriction described on
completed T2 Transfer of Land.
Analysing Errors is fairly self-explanatory. For example:
Determine and explain the plausibility of an explanation given by the
other party at settlement regarding an apparent defect in the execution of
a transfer of land.
Generalising involves the construction of new generalizations based on
prior learning. For example:
Construct and defend general principles concerning the preparation and
purpose of the transfer of land document.
Specifying involves identification of logical consequences of information
or procedures. For example:
Make and defend predictions about the likely consequences if the transfer
of land accepted at settlement is defective.

Knowledge Utilisation (4)

Knowledge Utilisation involves decision-making, problem-solving,
experimenting and investigating.
Decision-making involves the use of information and procedures to
make decisions. For example:
Using Information the student must decide whether to accept the
transfer of land document at settlement and explain why.
Using Mental Procedure the student must decide whether to accept the
transfer of land document based on her or his own analysis of other
documents and information.

Problem-solving involves the use of information and procedures to solve

problems. For example:
Using Information student must solve a problem concerning the transfer
of land document using her or his own knowledge and information.
Using Mental Procedure student must orally describe the mental
processes and skills another person would be required to use to prepare a
transfer of land document without previous experience
Experimenting involves the use of information and procedures to
produce and test hypotheses.
Investigating involves the use of information and procedures to conduct
investigations.

Potential Implications

If we adopt this taxonomic approach we could achieve and improved

framework for competency standards, educational objectives, curriculum
design, instructional design, and design for formative and summative
assessments.
Also, this approach provides practitioners with clearly defined waypoints
for our own reflective practice as educators and mentors.

Educational Objectives
You may have picked this up in the examples I used from conveyancing
practice above. It is important to frame the objectives for each level of
processing within each domain in contemplation of education objectives.
Mager [4] identifies Global Objectives, Instructional Objectives and
Educational Objectives.
Global Objectives describe the overarching goals, for example the
Competency Standards for Entry Level Lawyers in Australia. In this blog I
have used examples from conveyancing practice to illustrate different
levels of knowledge processing.
The global objective for property law practice in the Competency
Standards is:
An entry level lawyer should be able to convey, lease and mortgage real
property. The lawyer should also be able to provide general advice on

standard matters arising under legislation relating to land use in that

State or Territory.
Instructional Objectives involve performance criteria, the conditions
under which the task must be performed and the criterion (or how well the
learner must perform to be satisfactory).
An example of an instructional objective from the Competency Standards:
The lawyer has competently drafted an appropriate instrument of
transfer or conveyance and had it executed and (if necessary) stamped
and registered, according to law.
Educational Objectives are specific subject verb object statements, for
example: The learner will be able to [verb phrase] [object], or:
The student must Identify and explain the category of right or restriction
described on completed T2 Transfer of Land.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this blog I stated that we as instructors and assessors

should be ready, willing and able to give an account of how and why we
instruct, mentor and assess as we do.
I submit that we are able to do this in a systematic way by adopting a
taxonomic approach to the way we design instruction and assess student
performance in Practical Legal Training.
It does take substantial labour to implement this approach but there are
many benefits, including patently clear statements of educational
objectives for students, lecturers and assessors that allow for consistent
assessment and grading of performance (more on grading in another
blog).
See a detailed outline via SlideShare here:
Bloom to Marzano in Practical Legal Training