DEVELOPING QUESTIONS FOR

SCRIPTURE STUDY THAT SUPPORT MAXIMUM LEARNING

JAN PARON, PHDALL NATIONS LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE

Bloom’s Taxonomy:

Six Levels for Understanding

Six Levels of Understanding

When teaching, one needs to address understanding in six different levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. 

Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning, each level is a building block for understanding the next.

Beginning with the most basic level, which is knowledge, understanding becomes progressively more complex. The most complex is evaluation.

Six Levels of Understanding

Comprehension

Application

Analysis

Synthesis

Evaluation

Fundamental level of understanding

Knowledge

Complex & advanced levels of understanding

Learning Progression of the Six Levels of Understanding

Six Levels of Understanding

When developing questions and activities associated with your selected scripture study, you should address each level of understanding

Six Levels of Understanding

The length of time you allow for at each level is determined by the prior knowledge of the audience.

Make adjustments and adaptations to time and approach, but include questions representative of all understanding levels.

Six Levels of Understanding

Let’s review the basic meaning of each level of understanding.

Six Levels of Understanding

Knowledge•Re

cognize information, ideas, and principles

Function

•List, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label, collect, examine, tabulate, quote, name, who, when, where, etc.

Associated Action Verbs

•Define the principles of individual and communal ministry

•Describe the “temptation to be spectacular.”

Example

Six Levels of Understanding

Comprehension

•Comprehends or interprets scripture or text based on prior meaning 

Function

•Summarize, describe, interpret, contrast, predict, associate, distinguish, estimate, differentiate, discuss, extend

Associated Action Verbs

•Discuss how the “temptation to be spectacular” impacts communal ministry

Example

Six Levels of Understanding

Application•Select

s, transfers, and uses data and principles to complete a life task with minimum direction

Function

•Apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete, illustrate, show, solve, examine, modify, relate, change, classify, experiment, and discover

Associated Action Verbs

•Think of a situation involving communal ministry. Relate how you would avoid the “temptation to be spectacular” in that situation.

Example

Six Levels of Understanding

Analysis

•Thought process in use: can examine, classify, hypothesize, collect data, and draw conclusions

Function

•Analyze, separate, order, explain, connect, classify, arrange, divide, compare, select, explain, infer

Associated Action Verbs

•Why do you think Nouwen included a separate chapter in his book about the “temptation to be spectacular”?

Example

Six Levels of Understanding

Synthesis

•Originates, integrates, and combines ideas into a product, plan, or proposal that is new

Function

•Combine, integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create, design, invent, what?, compose, formulate, prepare, generalize, rewrite

Associated Action Verbs

•Create a plan showing how you would adjust your personal and public actions as a mission team member in Belize, keeping in mind avoiding the temptations of being spectacular.

Example

Six Levels of Understanding

Evaluate

•Appraises, assesses, criticizes on a basis or specific standards or criteria.

Function

•Assess, decide, rank, grade, test, measure, recommend, convince, select, judge, explain, discriminate, support, conclude, compare, and summarize

Associated Action Verbs

•Critique another group’s plan for effectiveness of actions that show how to avoid the “temptation to be spectacular” (as a team member on the Belize mission trip).

Example

Six Levels of Understanding

Guided Practice

Let’s try writing questions for each of the six levels of understanding for Nouwen’s chapter on “The Temptation: To Be Spectacular.”

Six Levels of Understanding

Guided Practice

Before you begin, determine your vision for learning for that chapter. In other words, what is the enduring understanding you want your students to have when they walk away from this study?

Six Levels of Understanding

Guided Practice

Here’s my vision or enduring understanding for this study:

“Each type of ministry environment, whether it be individually or communally based, poses unique challenges. As a pastor, one must be acutely aware of his own fleshly nature and spiritually prepare for successful ministry regardless of the environment.”

Six Levels of Understanding

References

Acknowledgments go to the authors of “Bloom’s Taxonomy for Learning.” Bloom and other colleagues identified the knowledge and skills involved in the cognitive domain of learning. The six levels of understanding I explained are actually the major categories of the cognitive domain from Bloom. (Bloom, 1956)