BLOOM'S TAXONOMY AND THE DESIGNED HIV/AIDS PROGRAM
The proposed study will provide an AIDS eduction program to 1,200 students (boys and girls) between the ages of 12 and 15 years. In an effort to test the effectiveness of the program regarding teaching students about HIV/AIDS relationships and methods of disease transmission, all program participants will be pretested and posttested regarding these knowledge areas.
The designed program has several instructional components. These include lectures, interactive seminars, and videos on a broad variety of HIV/AIDS related issues and concerns. These issues include the following topics: the difference between HIV and AIDS; the nature of the HIV virus versus the virus that produces the common cold; ways which HIV can and cannot be transmitted; how to identify an AIDS patient (only by a blood test); safe sex practices and abstinence.
A key question that must be asked relative to the proposed program design and evaluation is whether it can be justified on pedagogical grounds as an effective method of knowledge transmission. In other words, is there reason to believe that an educational program designed in the manner of this program will be an effective vehicle for learning? Regarding the question, it can be stated that it is the contention here that the program design and evaluative methods can be justified as effective on the basis of Bloom's Taxonomy (see: Bloom, 1956).
Bloom's Taxonomy categorizes cognitive learning into six major divisions with each upper division subsuming the previous lower ones. The divisions are: (1) knowledge; (2) comprehension; (3) application; (4) analysis; (5) synthesis; and (6) evaluation.
According to Ornstein and Hunkins (1993), a key assumption of this taxonomy is that effective learning should proceed from the lower to the higher levels. In other words in any given educational program, the basic thrust should be a strong grounding in ...