Week 3: LESSON PLANNING: THEORIES IN EDUCATION

To Become a super teacher we need to:

• Explore the Food Technology Syllabus 
• Focus on areas of study
• Identify key concepts 
• Explore and research educational theorists, such as Bloom, De Bono, Gardner

Steps in lesson planning using backwards approach: (refer to week 2)

THEORIES IN EDUCATION

Benjamin Bloom 

Benjamin Bloom is the founder of the 'Blooms Taxonomy' that was developed in 1956. The taxonomy highlights the different learning domains of, cognitive (knowledge), affective (attitude) and pyschomotor (skills) domains. Since its development, it has been used around the world by educators, industry and businesses to improve teaching and learning environments. 

Blooms Taxonomy model is a very useful tool, that can be used as a checklist, to develop training programs, curriculum, lesson plans as well as designing and evaluating. It is one of the most widely used models in education as it provides an excellent structure for planning, designing, assessing and evaluating teaching and learning and its effectiveness.

The cognitive domain is the knowledge domain comprising of 6 categories:

1. Knowledge

2. Comprehension

3. Apply

4. Analyse

5. Evaluate

6. Create
In 2001, Anderson and Krathwhol, adjusted the model swapping 5 and 6 the other way around.

In education, Blooms Taxonomy model is very useful and is widely used. In food technology it can productively be used while planning lessons, incorporating activities that promote remembering and understanding such as observing, listening, matching games, and then applying the knowledge by demonstrating, cooking, presentations. Showing their creativeness by incorporating tasks such as creating their food products, labels, packaging are all activities that develop and show the students full understanding of the topics.

Edward De Bono

Edward De Bono was born in 1933 and is a master of thinking. He developed the term, Lateral Thinking, as well as the six thinking hats, which have been used in many schools around the world.
The 6 thinking hats tools developed by De Bono is a very useful tool to use in education as it separates the different thinking styles into 6 different categories and is a tool to strengthen critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity Skills. The thinking hats can be assumed as a metaphor, where the hat can be put on or taken off, thus curving the thinking to different levels. Students can work in groups and given the similar thinking hat enabling all perspectives to be included and considered. 

The six thinking hats has been a proven method to develop excellent thinking skills, to promote independent thinking, problem solving, listening skills, improve research and writing skills as well as thinking before speaking.
In food technology, the 6 thinking hats model can be used effectively more so in group work and research tasks. The students can be placed in groups and given concepts to research, and by providing the groups with a thinking hat, all members can come up with ideas and knowledge and then present to the class. For the same concept, 6 groups can come up different ways of relating the same information. 

Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner (1983) is the founder of the theory of 7 intelligences. He suggests from his research that students learn, remember, understand, perform in many different ways through different sources such as music, reading, writing, mathematical, and scientific analysis. Keeping this in mind, Howard's theory challenges the educational system where it assumes that all students learn in the same way, with the same resources. He argues that differences in learning style and activities accommodating these different styles should be incorporated into teaching to include all the different learning styles of the students. 

The 7 identified Intelligence's are:

• Visual-Spatial: Aware of environments, physical space, activities of learning include: drawing, puzzles, models, multimedia, graphs, photos
• Bodily-Kinesthetic: Using the body effectively, activities of learning include: physical activities, hands on learning, acting or role playing
• Musical: sensitivity to music, activities of learning include: turning lessons into lyrics, music in the background, rhythms, musical instruments, music
• Interpersonal: understanding, interacting with others, activities of learning include: email, video/telephone conferencing, time and attention, group activities, seminars
• Intra-personal: Understanding ones own interests and goals, activities of learning include: independent learning and study through books, diaries, creative material
• Linguistic: Using words effectively, activities of learning include: reading, playing word games, poetry, stories, computer games
• Logical- Mathematical: Reasoning, calculating, activities of learning include: experiments, puzzles, questioning, logical games, investigations, mysteries

In education, in particular food technology, realizing the different learning styles of students in the classroom can play a role in using these intelligence's. Providing various activities from all learning styles can help all students in the class and can make teaching and learning effective. A mixture of hands on work, independent study as well as experimenting and research and allowing students to present their work in their way can prove to be successful in achieving the outcomes. 

Reference List

• Business Balls (2010-2013) Blooms Taxonomy- Learning Domains, Retrieved from, http://www.businessballs.com/bloomstaxonomyoflearningdomains.htm
• Clark, D., (2013) Blooms Taxonomy of Learning Domains retrieved from, http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
• De Bono Thinking Systems, (2013), Six Thinking Hats, Retrieved from, http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm
• The Learning Partnership, (2014), EdwDeBono.com, The Original De Bono website, retrived from http://edwdebono.com/
• The De Bono Group, (2014) The Six Thinking Hats retrieved from http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php

• Lane, C., Multiple Intelligences Retrieved from, http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html
• Thirteen Ed online, (2004) Concept to Classroom: Tapping into Multiple intelligence's retrieved from, http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/mi/