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Trans-Symbolic Comprehension: A Higher Order of Thinking

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Running Head: TRANS-SYMBOLIC COMPREHENSION Trans-Symbolic Comprehension: A Higher Order of Thinking Sandra M. Loughlin Disciplined Reading and Learning Research Laboratory University of Maryland, College ParkTRANS-SYMBOLIC COMPREHENSION 1 Trans-Symbolic Comprehension: A Higher Order of Thinking In the educational and psychological literature, the term comprehension has multiple meanings and connotations. When considered in light of popular and influential taxonomies of thinking (e.g., Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom et al., 1956), comprehension is portrayed as simplistic and certain. For instance, in Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956), commonly referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy, comprehension is categorized as a “lower-order” cognitive activity, second only to knowledge acquisition, or “mere rote learning or verbalization” (Bloom, Hastings, & Madaus, 1971 p. 149). This description connotes comprehension, or “understanding,” as minimally abstract, simple, and easy. Moreover, it suggests that comprehension is separate from, but a necessary precursor to, higher levels of cognitive activity represented in the taxonomy; namely application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. However, the reading and understanding literatures paints a different picture. To those steeped in its examination, comprehension or understanding (most notably of text) is a far more complex and multifaceted enterprise than suggested by Bloom and colleagues (Duke & Carlisle, 2011; Keene, 2008). Theories and models of reading imply that understanding text is neither simple nor certain, requiring the orchestration of processes associated with higher orders of the Bloom taxonomy, including evaluating the author’s point of view, inferring relations not explicitly stated in the text, and elaborating (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). Likewise, decades of research on teaching and learning for understanding have demonstrated the complexity of these meaningful learning endeavors (Ritchhardt, Morrison, & Church, in press). In light of these bodies of literature, some have even suggested that comprehension is often an instantiation ofTRANS-SYMBOLIC COMPREHENSION 2 higher-order thinking, a position in direct contrast to the taxonomic perspective (Alexander et al., in press). One of the paradoxes of Bloom’s conceptualization of comprehension is that, while it positioned in a more simplistic way than has been established in over a century of reading theory and research, it is nonetheless more expansive in its scope. Specifically, in Bloom’s taxonomy, comprehension is not constrained to the understanding of information presented in linguistic form (i.e., text or talk), as is typically the case within the educational literature. Rather, Bloom and colleagues discuss in detail the role of comprehension in the gaining meaning from a variety of non-linguistic compositions (e.g., mathematical statements, and paintings), an approach that is reflected in both historical and contemporary views of understanding. However, this trans-symbolic perspective of comprehension has not been mirrored in most of the contemporary literature on reading. Instead, established models of comprehension are explicitly or tacitly nested in the context of linguistic processing (e.g., Graesser, Mills, & Zwaan, 1997; Kintsch, 1998), generally excluding non-linguistic compositions or assuming that they are understood in the same manner as text. This treatise examines the conflicting views of comprehension represented in taxonomies of thinking and the current literatures on the comprehension of text and understanding, suggesting that while Bloom’s view of comprehension is overly simplistic on the one hand, his trans-symbolic approach to its study is not. Rather, it is argued that the current literature on comprehension would benefit from a similar, expanded view of “understanding” that addresses meaning-making of both linguistic and non-linguistic compositions. Ultimately, the of Trans-Symbolic Comprehension framework (TSC; Loughlin & Alexander, in press) is forwarded as aTRANS-SYMBOLIC COMPREHENSION 3 reconceptualization of comprehension that addresses the limitations of Bloom’s taxonomic approach while maintaining his trans-symbolic perspective. A Taxonomic View of Thinking While more than twenty different taxonomies of thinking are represented in educational literature and practice (for a review, see de Kock, Sleegers, & Voeten, 2004), the first, and by far the most influential, is that articulated by Bloom et al. (1956) in Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. Commonly referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy, this slim volume has had a lasting effect on many areas of education. Indeed, as described by Anderson and Sosnaik (1994), the taxonomy is, “arguably, the most influential educational monograph of the past half century (p. vii),” impacting not only educational assessment and evaluation, but also, and possibly most notably, beliefs about thinking and learning. But why, among the myriad publications on education, was Bloom’s taxonomy so powerful? One answer lies in its historical context. At the time of the taxonomy’s original publication in 1956, behaviorism was the dominant paradigm in educational psychology (Alexander & Loughlin, in press; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2005), resulting in the view learning a behavioral response to stimuli. Because of this emphasis on the stimulation of learning, not the process of learning itself, assessments and objectives of learning were imprecise, vaguely worded goals, making reliable assessments difficult and cumbersome (Snowman & Biehler, 2000). Moreover, the field of education was in the midst of an instructional objectives movement spawned by industrial and military psychology, wherein complex, whole tasks were broken down into specific, terminal behaviors that were observable and measurable and often ordered in hierarchical frames (Saettler, 1990).TRANS-SYMBOLIC COMPREHENSION 4 In was in this context that Bloom’s taxonomy was presented. Originally designed to “provide for classification of the goals of our educational system…to help all teachers, administrators, professional specialists, and research workers who deal with curricular and evaluation problems” (p. 1), the taxonomy was an attempt to break down the complexities of learning into observable,


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