BENJAMIN Bloom was an educational psychologist.
Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analysing and evaluating, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning).
He identified three domains of educational activities or learning (Bloom, 1956), namely; cognitive: mental skills (knowledge); affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self) and psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)
His taxonomy of cognitive objectives is helpful in shedding light on levels of intellectual engagement sought for by the different types of instruction words.
Although the instruction words above are arranged alphabetically for ease of reference, care has been taken in the explication of each to indicate whether the level of intellectual engagement is low, medium or higher order.
This information is useful in guiding you to determine the pitch of your answer.
Bloom believes in the following hierarchical order of pitching an essay: l Knowledge level – requires simple recall of facts as in listing.
l Comprehension level – requires demonstrating clear understanding of concepts involved.
The best way to demonstrate this skill is to paraphrase or to say the same in your own words.
l Application level – requires you to contextualise or to demonstrate how a concept which works in one instance can (or fail to) apply in another.
l Analysis level – requires you demonstrate your knowledge of the constituent parts (elements) of a concept/poem or text including determining the function of each element of a whole.
The exercise of analysing involves some kind of dissection.
l Synthesis level – requires you to compile or put together discrete elements of a larger whole back into meaningful wholeness.
To do so, you need to know the place of each minute detail the way a motor mechanic rebuilds the engine parts back into life.
In synthesis, there is also a silent instruction to avoid verbosity (wordiness) but to stick to essentials with deftness and dexterity.
l Evaluation level – requires you to go beyond identifying essential elements of a larger concept but to proceed and weigh each against a set of criteria such as applicability (i.e. how applicable is this element in a different scenario) and fitness for purpose (i.e. how appropriate is that element for that purpose).
Evaluation also silently invites you to give a personal opinion, but of course with some justification.
In Bloom’s categorisation above, ‘1’ and ‘2’ are generally considered lower level; ‘3’ and ‘4’ medium level with ‘5’ and ‘6’ at higher level.
These three levels tell you about the intellectual faculties you have to marshal. Every instruction word tells you something about the level of intellectual engagement expected of you.
In other words, the instruction word tells you more than just the boundaries of its meaning.
It also tells you about the intellectual pitch as well as the depth of coverage expected.
I am sure this discussion has helped you understand the limits of discussion provided by instruction words.
Need I reiterate that knowledge of such boundaries is important in guiding you against redundancy or going off topic?
This has serious implications for organisation of essays.
Content words
The content words in the question above are: ‘Concept of national sovereignty is becoming increasingly problematic.’
This content tells you that the ‘discussion’ is broadly situated in the area of international relations.
That is the thematic context in which your discussion is located.
A further examination of the content words reveals that it is not everything about international relations that the essay must address.
It is only the concept of sovereignty which is being interrogated or problematised.
Anything else about international relations which is not ‘sovereignty’ or ‘sovereignty-related’ is therefore not part of your discussion.
Special conditions
Special conditions further refine the boundaries of your response.
There are two special conditions in our question: ‘With examples’ and ‘in our times’.
‘With examples’ is a special condition, directing that the points you raise for and against must be accompanied by illustrations.
If your essay misses out on this expectation, it means you have not fully conceptualised the question.
Furthermore, ‘in our times’ narrows your discussion only to points that are relevant to the contemporary period.
This automatically makes irrelevant any other point valid in the past, but not in the present.
When you are finally clear in terms of interpretation; that is, in terms of the three pillars, then you can proceed to the essay outline.