Facilitating Learning: What is to be Learnt

Level of complexity

Clearly there are different sorts of learning. Bloom’s taxonomy18 identifies, in ascending order, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation19 (c.f. Chapter 7.4.3). True mastery involves the grasp of higher-order concepts which go beyond the lower-order skills of acquisition and retention of facts. This must be clearly kept in mind and clarified with the students, and courses should be designed to achieve this. Obviously, to develop higher-order skills, courses should require response at this level. Spoon-feeding and setting tasks which demand merely rote-learning, for instance, would be unhelpful.

Information transfer vs. development of the mind

The curriculum needs to be examined to see if it is encouraging the desired aims and objectives of higher education. If training of minds has precedence over transmission of information, then quality rather than quantity—teaching how and habituating students to think in terms of how rather than what—should have higher priority in curricular decisions. More is not necessarily better; an overload may have an adverse effect on learning.

In order to cope with overwhelming curricula, the students probably have to abandon their ambitions to understand what they read about and instead direct efforts towards passing examinations...20

Relevance

Apart from being up-to-date, the curriculum should also be perceived by the student as having relevance for his/her purposes; it is then more likely to produce significant learning. This has interesting implications, for instance, for the selection of students and curriculum design.

  1. B.S. Bloom, et al. (Eds.). (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals: Handbook I, Cognitive Domain. New York: Longmans, Green.
  2. Knowledge = recognise or replicate information. Comprehension = organise information and represent in own words. Application = use information to solve problem. Analysis = make sense of and use evidence to make inferences and generalisation. Synthesis = relate and combine various pieces of information. Evaluation = judge merit of an idea or solution.
  3. L.O. Dahlgren. (1978). ‘Qualitative Differences in Conceptions of Basic Principles in Economics’. Paper at 4th International Conference on Higher Education, University of Lancaster.