Volume 71 - Winter 1999	Download

Designing professional curriculum using three taxonomic levels by Jane Adrian, EdM, MT(ASCP) NAACLS Site Visitor and Former CLSPRC Member

A well-designed professional curriculum is at once reflective, descriptive and predictive of professional practice. Content, design, and delivery of a curriculum must embody the knowledge base, skills and values of the profession.

With the adoption of the 1995 Essentials, NAACLS re-emphasized the outcomes of curriculum. In the process, the Essentials became even less prescriptive and more user-friendly.
As a result of the emphasis on outcomes, the assessment of course objectives and the corresponding evaluation tools provide a very practical starting point for faculty who are asked to verify that theory, application, and problem solving are included within all content areas for NAACLS accredited programs.

Within each discipline (e. g. , chemistry, microbiology) faculty must demonstrate through curriculum design that students master skills in three separate domains: cognitive, psychomotor and affective. Within each of the domains, knowledge, skills and attitudes are further ordered and classified into taxonomic levels that represent the accepted conventions of practice. Benjamin Bloom and his colleague, David Krathwohl, are recognized as pioneers in categorizing these levels. Such models of curriculum development have proven especially efficient for designing professional courses of study because faculty are forced to make very clear exactly what it is that the students should learn.

In developing qualifying examinations, the major certifying agencies, NCAMLP and the ASCP Board of Registry, have each adopted three standard levels for the cognitive domain. They are:

Level 1 -- Recall of Theory
(Equivalent to Bloom's Levels 1 and 2)

Level 2 -- Application
(Equivalent to Bloom's Levels 3 and 4)

Level 3 -- Evaluation
(Equivalent to Bloom's Levels 5 and 6)

Recall (Level 1) is the ability to remember or recognize previously learned knowledge, ideas, and materials, which can range from specific facts to elaborate theories. We should not always assume that objectives and test items at Level 1 are simple or easy. This level may challenge the student's facility with theory and may, in fact, represent complex, intricate and difficult concepts.

Application (Level 2) is the ability to use and apply information in a problem-solving situation. It includes the ability to relate how constituent parts of information are organized and fit together.

Evaluation (Level 3) is the ability to use recalled elements of knowledge and to form new structures. It includes the interpretation of distinct criteria to resolve a problem or situation and to make qualitative and quantitative judgments.

The different taxonomic levels represent unique and equally important cognitive functions. Over time, the profession has slipped into referring to taxonomic Level I as a "lower" level and taxonomic Level III as a "higher" level of cognitive function. The authors of the original model did not intend to suggest that Level I was simple or elementary while Level III represented complex or difficult cognitive functions. Level I objectives and corresponding evaluation tools can and do represent complex and difficult concepts.

As defined above, the model suggests that at Level I the student is asked to recall information that has been learned. At Level II the student assesses the problem and develops an answer, such as completing a math problem or matching a diagnosis to a set of results. At Level III the student is required to organize the information learned in Level I and the results of the assessment in Level II to select or develop a correct or appropriate course of action to resolve the problem. Taxonomic leveling, then, is a characteristic of curriculum design in relationship to desired outcomes and is not necessarily a reflection of expert knowledge about the subject.

For accreditation purposes, a program director is required to showcase the professional curriculum in the Self-Study Report. This is accomplished most effectively by providing outlines of content areas, samples of related objectives, and corresponding evaluation items representative of each level.

At the end of the professional education, a well-designed curriculum will culminate in examinations that are representative of all major content areas, domains and taxonomic levels.

Bloom, B. S. , et al. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. Published in 1956 by David McKay Company in New York, this is the most widely accepted and used classification of the cognitive domain.

Krathwohl, D. R. , Bloom, B. S. and Masia, B. B. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Handbook II. The Affective Domain. Published in 1964 by David McKay Company in New York, this work describes the nature of the affective domain and describes the evaluation of each level in the taxonomy.

Harrow, A. J. A Taxonomy of the Psychomotor Domain. Published in 1972 by David McKay Company in New York, this work is an excellent reference for developing objectives in the psychomotor domain.

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