The first article goes in-depth about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, “a motivational theory” that displays human needs in a hierarchical model. Maslow created this model with the original five-tier structure comprised from bottom to top with the following needs: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. There is also an emphasis on the difference between deficiency needs versus growth needs. According to Maslow, the first four needs on the pyramid are deficiency needs (physiological, safety, and love and belonging), and the last two (esteem and self-actualization) are growth needs. When this hierarchy was first created, it was believed to have a sequential nature to it, meaning that once an individual met the needs in a certain tier, they could move up the pyramid. However, this has changed overtime, and now it is much more common for someone to experience needing multiple needs from different tiers at a time. This means that a certain behavior or time in life is multi-motivated (needing more than one basic need). Maslow’s point about our first and foremost need, physical survival, still remains consistent in today’s society.
In the 1970s, three more categories were added to Maslow’s hierarchy to include cognitive needs, aesthetic needs, and later transcendence needs. These additions to the pyramid fall under growth needs meaning that they stem from a desire for one to grow as a person. Cognitive needs include the pursuit for knowledge and sharpening one’s mental skills, aesthetic needs include the growth of one’s appreciation and search for beauty and balance in their life, and transcendence needs go beyond the personal self. On the original five-tiered hierarchy, transcendence actually comes after self-actualization because such needs are searching for values that transcend above and beyond an individual’s original thoughts of themselves.
After reading this article, it really made me evaluate my own life and what needs I experience. Personally, I believe that I’m constantly trying to meet my love and belonging needs and esteem needs in social situations. However, when I’m alone, I try and focus on my self-actualization needs, like taking care of my physical and/or mental health. I think it is important for people to learn about this hierarchy so that they can better understand how to become the best possible version of themselves. An important point to remember is that life isn’t always a linear progression. This hierarchy of needs cannot be achieved overnight because personal growth takes a lifetime.
The second article was Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains. The three overarching domains include cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. The cognitive domain originally included the following: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. However, this domain was later revised by one of Bloom’s students and are now as follows: creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering. The revised sections in this domain reflect a more active form of thinking in that they are no longer nouns, but verbs. Additionally, the taxonomy categorizes all knowledge as factual, conceptual, and procedural. However, this was not very helpful in understanding how to describe more complex knowledge inquiries. Krathwohl and Anderson revised the original version and created The Cognitive Dimension. They added another category of describing knowledge, metacognitive, and combined all four of these categories with the six cognitive dimensions to create the matrix. However, the most recent matrix includes five more “artifacts”: facts, concepts, processes, procedures, and principles. On the matrix, these new concepts are listed under the knowledge categories and come before metacognitive when describing cognitive thought. Bloom’s taxonomy is specifically helpful for educators and other academic professionals, because it allows for the discussion of how learning is being exchanged and processed among students. It can also be used as an effective assessment tool. The goal is to build up the lower-level cognitive skills in students first, remembering and understanding, so that some of the higher-level cognitive skills, applying analyzing and evaluating, can become more like second nature.
I found this article very helpful as an aspiring educator to show how the taxonomy has changed overtime. I think it is super important that we understand how and why we think the way we do because not only will it optimize our learning experiences, but it will also heighten our academic skills for our future endeavors. I also found this article super helpful when it went in depth about all the examples of each cognitive dimension. It really showed how complex and adaptable our brain is to stimuli in the classroom and the outside world in general.
The next article also discusses Bloom’s Taxonomy, but it goes more in depth about the digital taxonomy map that was created off of Bloom’s original model. The following are key terms that are used in the model from lower to higher-order thinking levels: remembering, understanding, applying, evaluating, and creating. Among these categories, this model gives specific examples of what each level looks like. For example, under remembering, there is listing, naming, and bullet pointing. At this point in the learning stage, these written methods are used to simply memorize material. Understanding includes summarizing, inferring, and blog journaling, so instead of wrote memorization of material, more individual thought needs to be used at this stage. Applying includes carrying out and sharing of information so the learner must have a firm grasp on the content in order to explain it in their own words. The higher-order thinking skills come in the last three terms, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. I like the visual that this digital model provides because you can physically see how complex and structured the learning process is. It also emphasizes how important it is to spend more time on more difficult content, because simply remembering information does not equal complete comprehension. Again, this taxonomy is helpful for educators in order to assess their students’ academic progress.
The last article on learning theories discusses Backward Design and how teachers can switch their perspective on lesson planning. The premise of this article describes how having the end in mind before teaching can be a more helpful and effective way of teaching. There are three key stages in this type of teaching process: Stage 1 — What is worthy and requiring of understanding?, Stage 2 — What is evidence of understanding?, and Stage 3 — What learning experiences and teaching promote understanding, interest, and excellence?. Each of these stages can be broken down and described in detail. It is important for educators to identify their desired results of a lesson prior to teaching it so that they have a sense of purpose and direction in their teaching. It is also helpful for students to keep the end result in mind so that they feel more prepared for what is to come.
The next stage, determining acceptable evidence of mastery, looks different for every teacher and the specific material they are trying to cover. This can include basic checks for understanding, listening in on student dialogue, giving formal quizzes and tests, or assigning and grading larger projects. It is also important to note that this stage needs to be conducted more than once prior to the end of the unit. If there are no checks for understanding sprinkled throughout a unit, a teacher has no way of knowing whether or not their students are 100% on board with what is going on. The article goes further in depth about the different assessment types based on what a teacher is trying to test:“enduring” understanding, important things to know and do, and other concepts worth being familiar with. Lastly, once the framework of what needs to be accomplished and how it will be assessed is layed out, the teacher can dive into the third stage of actually planning the instruction of their curriculum. This can include different types of activities the teacher creates, what materials will be needed, and the overall design of their lesson plans.
According to the article, each of these stages has specific considerations, like national standards, time, and the specific classroom environment that is created between the teacher and their students. Overall, I think that the Backward Design construction of an academic curriculum is a more effective way to approach teaching, because it allows educators to really think about what is meaningful and important for their students to understand prior to the actual teaching begins.
I enjoyed reading about these learning theories for this module because as an elementary education major, I would love to optimize my future students’ experience in the classroom. I also think that learning how people learn is a better way to approach education than to simply teach for the sake of meeting state and federal curriculum requirements.
Thanks for reading!
Technology for an Aspiring Educator 