Out of the humanist matrix: Learning taxonomies beyond Bloom

Abstract:

This article critiques the ‘humanist’ legacy by questioning the cognitivist and constructivist paradigms which underpin dominant models of adult learning. It asks whether they are suitable for evaluating the way art and design students work with digital technology, questioning humanist and cognitivist models of learning, such as Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956) and whether it supports curiosity, criticality and imaginative risk. It connects this issue to the problem of ‘normative validity’, which describes how that which is measured is valued – ‘the indicator of quality becomes the definition of quality’ (Biesta, 2013, p.1) – overshadowing more inclusive approaches to learning.

Reflections

I was drawn to this article as Bloom’s taxonomy, as well as constructivist/cognitivist/ connectivist pedagogies, have underpinned the approaches of the publishing and higher education institutions I have worked in. I have carried my concern over the “escalating culture of ‘accountability and audit,’”(p.47) from institution to institution, watching this increasingly manifest itself in how teaching and learning is approached. Dare’s article articulated this bubbling concern of mine to myself. It has made me consider and critique my own assumptions and practice. I now see the extent of the issue as well as possible futures.

As a learning technologist, I have been trained to embed these pedagogical approaches within my practice. While there are some practical takeaways (learners constructing knowledge rather passively receiving it from a “sage on stage”), I have felt troubled about this reductionist approach to learning. It is as though, provided one designs within the lines of humanist pedagogies, all learners and learning can be uniformly contained within the same approach. I do find the learning technology community to be well meaning and genuinely concerned with evolving practice, yet this somewhat mercenary approach pervades.

Humanist pedagogies are problematic because they are predicated on a white male Eurocentric preset for human experience. We need only think of the multitude of ways different groups have continually been dehumanised based on their bodies, beliefs, abilities, backgrounds to see this as real and harmful. Therefore, the idea of humanist education is exclusionary and privileges one kind of human and how that human supposedly learns. As Dare states:

The connections between Papert’s constructivism and Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy are created by a set of humanist presumptions. In both models the individual is swept into ‘a concept of rationality which is an ahistorical, universal model leading to a view of learning that fails to deal directly with considerations and questions of […] ideology, culture, power and race-class-genderdifferences’ (Illeris, 2009, p.95). This also raises the question of what happens to students who have little or no familiarity with positivist constructions of knowledge, meaning knowledge empirically verified via sense data, but also that which is filtered through mathematical systems of logic.

p.46

This opened up to me how we could consider decolonising learning technology. As a learning technologist I am at a remove from the curriculum and so have wondered about my role in decolonizing it. Questioning and critiquing the theory that underpins my practice therefore feels like a concrete action I can personally take towards decolonization.

The article questions how “This pedagogic model underpins many learning technologies, including the virtual learning environment (VLE), Moodle, which was created by the technologist Martin Dougiamas (1998; 2000) with a specifically constructivist agenda. Dougiamas is clear in his allegiance to constructivism, and its embedding within Moodle, as evidenced by his many publications, not least of all in his blog post ‘A Journey into Constructivism’ (1998).” (p. 46) This made me reflect on my extensive use of Moodle. While I had considered Moodle’s possible inbuilt bias towards accessibility, I hadn’t considered what ideology might underpin it. As Dare states:

…the models we draw upon when deploying the digital in teaching and evaluation are far from neutral, as the subject of these evaluations –the learner –is an ideological construct that serves an outdated ontology, a humanist agenda, which excludes a more expansive consideration of the world in which we exist.

p.45

Dare also underscores how humanist pedagogical approaches serve the problematic marketisation of education.

•”Are the hard-and-fast metrics which educators and technologists find themselves bombarded with in any way reconcilable with an evaluation of what happens when students engage with creative practice? Practices in which ‘the kinds of transitions we are considering are not linear, not the learning of simple isolated concepts’ but ‘messy, abstract transformations’?”

p.47

This made me think of the UK government’s value system for categorising disciplines and how Sheffield Hallam suspended an English Lit course for being “low value” within this framework (Weale 2022). When education is reduced to its relation to the economy, employment figures, tax payments, aren’t learners dehumanised? It’s as if learning and creativity are ores that can be extracted to power the economy, a row in the government’s balance sheet. 

Theodor Adorno (2011) wrote about the insidious pervasiveness of low culture in capitalist societies. Low culture is cheap to produce but its impact on our souls and being is also inferior. It is simply there to appease and relax us, to make us docile cogs within the capitalist machine. In contrast, high culture challenges us, develops us intellectually and can have an emancipatory effect. Notwithstanding the classist idea of high and low art, I wonder about the fate of art that provokes, shocks and teaches us things, if neoliberalism means that art education must have a commercially viable output.

However, Dare’s article closes with a note of hope for the future:

Posthumanist educational theory proposes that we ‘have never been separate from machines and that notions of “humanness” could not be produced without machines’ –in other words, we ‘have always been technological’ (Snaza et al., 2014, p.44). This idea radicalises Vygotsky’s notion of technology as a ‘mediating object’ (1978). A posthumanpedagogy challenges us to consider what Braidotti calls ‘life beyond the self’, and ‘life beyond the species’, to bridge the ‘nature-culture’ and all other ontological divides (Braidotti, 2013, p.186). According to Braidotti, we need to consider virtual entities, animals, codes, networks and flows of energy (2013, p.190), the complex assemblage of agencies inextricably entangled with our always emergent, dynamic subjectivities.

p.46

This made me think of technicians who have always been at the forefront of emerging technologies in their disciplines. The idea of always being technological is therefore not new. However, embracing virtual entities, animals, flows of energy is so relevant now as we strive to deliver socially, environmentally conscious teaching. For my part it’s about how we do this in a meaningfully blended way.

References

Adorno, T.W. (2010) The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Edited by J.M. Bernstein. London, UK: Routledge. 

Dare, E. (2018) ‘Out of the humanist matrix: Learning taxonomies beyond Bloom’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 3(1), pp. 43-51. Available at: https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article/view/79 (Accessed: 06 January 2023).

Weale, S. (2022) Philip Pullman leads outcry after Sheffield Hallam withdraws English Lit Degree, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jun/27/sheffield-hallam-university-suspends-low-value-english-literature-degree (Accessed March 20, 2023). 

My presentation based on my reading of this article