The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: Current Practices at Polytechnics in Bangladesh and its Effects in Developing Students’ Competences

Haolader, Faruque A.; Ali, Md Ramjan; Foysol, Khan Md Article The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: Current Practices at Polytechnics in Bangladesh and its Effects in Developing Students’ Competences International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET) Provided in Cooperation with: European Research Network in Vocational Education and Training (VETNET), European Educational Research Association Suggested Citation: Haolader, Faruque A.; Ali, Md Ramjan; Foysol, Khan Md (2015) : The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: Current Practices at Polytechnics in Bangladesh and its Effects in Developing Students’ Competences, International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET), ISSN 2197-8646, European Research Network in Vocational Education and Training (VETNET), European Educational Research Association, Bremen, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 99-118, https://doi.org/10.13152/IJRVET.2.2.9 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/142447 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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Haolader* Department of Technical and Vocational Education Islamic University of Technology (IUT) Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Dhaka, Bangladesh E-mail: [email protected] Md Ramjan Ali Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technical Teachers’ Training College, Dhaka, Bangladesh E-mail: [email protected] Khan Md Foysol Department of Electronics Engineering Dhaka Mohila Polytechnic Institute Dhaka, Bangladesh E-mail: [email protected] * Corresponding author Received: 06 January 2015; Accepted: 22 July 2015; Published online: 07 September 2015 Abstract: Polytechnics in Bangladesh endeavour to produce quality graduates for national and international job markets. The quality of graduates depends on several factors. This study examines the implementation process of the polytechnic curriculum with the objectives of determining the current level of practices in learning/teaching material design, in delivering curriculum content, in assessing students and its effect on students’ competence development. Data was collected through observation, opinion survey and competence test. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used for data interpretation and analysis in this descriptive type of research study. Findings revealed that the learning materials are mainly theory oriented and mostly cover those contents usually common in exams. About half of teachers are aware of the taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing, but they rarely put importance on it. In the classroom, teachers spend only a little time for delivering content at the level of apply/analyse. However, a significant number of tasks performed in labs are practical and occupation relevant and can be classified at higher levels of the taxonomy. In student assessment, the test-items assess mainly theoretical knowledge at the level of remember. The effect of these practices is reflected in demonstrating student performance in a competence test. The study concludes with some recommendations. F. A. Haolader, M. R. Ali & K. M. Foysol IJRVET 2015 100 Keywords: Taxonomy, Competence, Learning, Teaching, Assessment, Technical and Vocational Education and Training, TVET, Diploma in Engineering, Curriculum Implementation, Polytechnics, Bangladesh Bibliographical notes: Dr Faruque A. Haolader is an associate professor at the Islamic University of Technology (IUT), a subsidiary organ of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). He has a doctoral degree in Technical and Vocational Education from Stuttgart, Germany, a master’s degree in Vocational and Adult Education for International Development Work from Dresden, Germany, a master’s degree in Engineering (Electronics & IT) from England, and a bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bangladesh. His research interests focus on teachinglearning in teacher's training and curriculum development (TVET), TVET curricula, didactic media, educational technology, competence modelling and measurement. MD Ramjan Ali is an assistant professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Technical Teachers Training College, Bangladesh. He has a bachelor’s and a masters’ degree both in electrical and electronic engineering and more than 25 years of teaching experience. His research interests focus on teaching-learning in TVET and curriculum. Khan Md. Foysol is an Instructor at Dhaka Mahila Polytechnic Institute in Bangladesh. He has more than eight years of teaching experience in the field of electronics technology. He has bachelor’s of science and master’s of science degrees both in Technical Education with specialization in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Islamic University of Technology (IUT) in Dhaka. Mr Khan’s Research interest is in TVET. The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing IJRVET 2015 101 1 Introduction The intended results at the output and outcome stages of systematic learningteaching process in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) are workplace-relevant qualification and competences, work-related social competences and general individual characteristics of learners (e.g. Rauner et al., 2007; KMK, 2007; Bader, 2004; Ott, 1998, w.r.t Lempert, 1986). Therefore, TVET curricula objectives are set to provide the trainees/students with the expertise in techniques or technologies (the domain-specific competences) relevant to an occupation, including other constituents of occupational competences (Boreham and Fischer, 2009; Tippelt and Amoros, 2003; Ellström, 1997). The curricula content should be more relevant, practical and useful than general education (e.g. Dare, 2006; Plank, 2001; Finch and Crunkilton, 1999), and the implementation process should enable students to learn/achieve these competences/learning outcomes, and finally they (intended competences/learning outcomes) should be checked through assessment and evaluation systems. However, the development of students’ occupational competences depends not only on a well-designed curriculum but also on many other factors, such as instructional quality, content delivery, student assessment approaches (curriculum implementation) and the quality of learning/teaching materials, among others, (e.g. Geißel, 2008; Fretwell, Lewis and Deij, 2001; Helmke and Weinert, 1997; Biggs, 1995). In the process of student performance assessment, the assessment procedure and performance measuring tools/instruments play an important role in developing students’ competences (e.g. Bieg and Mittag, 2009; Nickolaus, 2008; Geißel, 2008; Hopkins, 1998). It should be mentioned that TVET students become involved in learning with a good level of motivation both because they are stimulated intellectually and because they can readily see how their learning applies to their lives (Stone and Aliaga, 2003). Therefore, the TVET curriculum and its implementation should focus not just on remembering or reproducing but also on applying (transferring) or even generating new knowledge to specific situations that demand higher level cognitive process/ability (e.g. Ebel and Frisbie, 2009; Hopkins, 1998). Some research studies have identified problems in TVET institutions in Bangladesh and barriers to the development of TVET graduates’ competence. Kashem et al., (2011) and Oxtoby (1997), for example, state that the current TVET curricula, particularly the Polytechnic curricula of the Diploma-in-Engineering Programme, is too theoretical oriented, and a huge mismatch exists between the graduates’ competence and the competences in-use at the workplace, and therefore, they are unable to earn a considerable level of employers’ satisfaction. Some other studies have identified other barriers to quality TVET in Bangladesh, such as inadequate professional preparation of teachers in teaching methods, practical skills and industrial experience; a lack of academic supervision; a lack of teacher and institutional accountability; insufficient and unsuitable textbooks and lab equipment; a lack of government initiative and coordination among different levels of education (primary, secondary, tertiary) and among institutions; a lack of teacher-student communication; improper licensing; insufficient student keys and basic competencies at the entry-level; a lack of self-learning facilities at training institutes (for example, using ICT); a lack of modern teaching aids and inadequate attention to research, among others. (e.g. TVET Reform Project, 2015; Haolader and Paul, F. A. Haolader, M. R. Ali & K. M. Foysol IJRVET 2015 102 2013; Elbushari and Aktaruzzaman, 2012; Shears, 2011; ADB, 2008; WB, 2007; Khanam and Shamsuddoha, 2003). Irrespective of the above-mentioned problems/barriers, a body of research studies (e.g. Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001; Hopkins, 1998; Savery and Duffy, 1996; Gronlund, 1993; Bloom, et al., 1956) suggests that while designing and organising learning tasks, learning-teaching materials, instructions in classrooms/labs and the assessment tools for student performance measurement, tasks at different complexity levels of the taxonomy should be checked in terms of educational objectives and other factors, which support developing basic and occupation-relevant competences. Since these factors, along with appropriate learning-teaching models, strategies, and so on, contribute to the development of students’ competence and should be practiced during the learning-teaching process if desired outcomes are to be achieved. However, so far as it is known, only a few (or no) research studies have been done which focused on the learning-teaching materials, instructional design and content delivery methods usually used in polytechnic education in Bangladesh in terms of occupational relevance, knowledge categories and complexity levels of the tasks. Therefore, in this study, the researchers investigate the level of practicing the taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing, more specifically, in learning/teaching materials, in curriculum content delivery in classrooms and labs, and in student assessment at polytechnics in Bangladesh. Furthermore, to determine the effects of these factors (or practices), we measure the cognitive competence level of graduating (final year) polytechnic students. Finally, we make some recommendations as well. In the following sub-sections, we describe briefly the taxonomy of educational objectives, polytechnic education, the Diploma-in-Engineering Programme, and the occupational profile of diploma engineers. 1.1 The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives In the 1950s, following the 1948 Convention of the American Psychological Association, Bloom and his co-workers established a hierarchy of educational objectives, which is generally referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956). Other approaches of classification of learning content and outcomes are, for example, the New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives developed by Marzano and Kendall (2007), the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy developed by Biggs and Collis (1982), are gaining attention, too. However, Bloom’s Taxonomy is still one of the most widely used ways of organizing learning content and student learning outcomes (levels of expertise) and is considered as a “foundational element” in education (Shane, 1981). Therefore, this study considers the latter one (Bloom’s Taxonomy). Bloom's Taxonomy, which deals with the cognitive domain (knowledge, comprehension and the development of intellectual attitudes and skills), refers to the classification of educational objectives (at different levels – ranging from the simplest behaviour to the most complex) that educators set for learners (learning objectives). A goal of this taxonomy is to motivate teachers/educators to focus on different levels of this taxonomy, creating a more holistic form of education (Bloom, et al., 1956). According to Bloom (1956), there are six levels in the taxonomy, moving through the lowest order processes to the highest: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis. Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) revised the original/classic Bloom’s Taxonomy to incorporate advanc- The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing IJRVET 2015 103 es in learning theory and practice since its inception, and offered the following two-dimensional framework to describe learning objectives: Table 1: Cognitive Process and Knowledge Dimension Cognitive Process Dimension → Remember Understand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create Knowledge Dimension → Factual Remember Facts Understand Facts Apply Facts Analyze using Facts, Concepts, Principles and Procedures Evaluate using Facts, Concept, Principle and Procedures Create using Facts, Concepts, Principles and Procedures Concep tual Remember Concepts/ Principles Understand Concepts/ Principle Apply Concepts/ Principle Procedur- Remember Procedures Understand Procedures Apply Procedure Metacognitive Remember Metacog. Strategy Understand Metacog. Strategy Apply Metacog. Strategy Analyze using Meta. Strategies Evaluate using Meta. Strategy Create using Meta. Strategy Knowledge Skill Ability Notes: Source: Dalton, 2003, Heer, 2012, with reference to Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001. This two-dimensional framework distinguishes among the types of knowledge being learned (e.g. fact, concept/principle, procedure, m) and the type of cognitive process being employed (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, or create). In the left-most three columns, there is a strong correlation between the level of cognitive process and the type of knowledge content. For example, learners are often expected to remember facts, understand concepts/principles and apply procedures. However, creating learning objectives in the other cells is also possible, including apply facts and concepts. In each of the relatively more complex cognitive processes (analyze, evaluate and create), multiple types of knowledge content are generally employed. Often, another set of terms (knowledge, skill and ability) are used to characterize these objectives, as shown along the bottom of the framework (Dalton, 2003). A curriculum, particularly the TVET curriculum, includes content of different levels of learning objectives (Bloom et al., 1956; Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001; Marzano and Kendall, 2007). Therefore, learning/teaching activities and assessment should focus on achieving these learning objectives. 1.2 Polytechnic Education and the Diploma-in-Engineering Programme The Diploma-in-Engineering programme of Bangladesh Technical Education Board (BTEB) is implemented through Polytechnic Institutes or similar TVET Institutions and leads to a diploma level qualification for mid-level technicians/supervisors/managers/diploma engineers. It corresponds to Bangladesh National Technical and Vocational Qualification (NTVQ) Level 6 (NTVQ, 2012; BTEB, 2014) and can be referenced to the Upper Secondary Technical/Vocational Level 3 and Non-Tertiary Level 4 qualification with the provision of direct access to the job market and to the tertiary level of higher education (ISCED, 2011; ISCED, 1997). Students who acquire lower secondary qualification with a mini- F. A. Haolader, M. R. Ali & K. M. Foysol IJRVET 2015 104 mum of 10 years of schooling (ISCED Level 2) can enrol to this diploma programme. The curriculum of this diploma programme is developed by the BTEB. The duration of this programme is four years and is divided into eight semesters, including one Internship Semester at Industries. Unlike other forms of competencybased TVET curricula or training standards, for example, Germany’s learning-area- based framework (Lernfeld) curriculum (KMK, 2008; KMK, 2007), the diploma curriculum in Bangladesh is traditionally organized according to subject. Very recently, (from 2011 to 2014) the curriculum of this programme has been reviewed to address the changing requirements of the job market. The curriculum has about 50 taught courses (subjects), having a total of 162 credits in different subject categories, such as occupational/domain-specific subjects (90 credits, 56%); crossoccupational subjects (19 credit, 11%); mathematics and natural sciences (24 credits, 15%); arts, humanities and social sciences (13 credits, 8%); business competence and environmental studies (10 credits, 6%); and industrial attachment (six credits, 4%). These subjects are delivered in theory and practical/lab classes in a school-based setting with 12 weeks of industrial placement training in the last semester. At present, 49 public and 385 private polytechnic institutes (including NGO/not-for-profit) offer the four-year Diploma-in-Engineering Programme. In 2014, the total actual enrolment in public institute was 22,916 (including 3,899 female; 17.01%) in double shifts (morning and afternoon sessions), and it was 29,742 (including 1,925 females; 6.47%) in private institutes. It should be noted that the actual enrolment drifted slightly downwards from the actual enrolment in the previous year (2013), where the figures were 23,463 (including 3,338 females; 14.22%) and 34,332 (including 2,439 females; 7.10%) in public and private institutions, respectively (source: BTEB official current data, as of 6 December 2014). 1.3 Occupational Profile of Diploma Engineers The typical fields of activities of a diploma engineer (in Electronics Technology) may be, for example, production automation, process automation, network automation, traffic management systems, building security and automation systems, radio and television production, service industries and other electronic systems. Graduates can also be employed in hospitals, infrastructure facilities and industrial plants. Other fields are ICT devices, medical devices, automotive systems, systems components, sensors, actuators, micro systems, EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services), and measurement and testing technology (Haolader, 2010). Duties and responsibilities may include producing, putting into operation and maintaining components and devices and integrating, putting into operation, monitoring and maintaining electronic systems and automation solutions. Diploma engineers also provide technical and organizational services, conceive new ideas and install safety, monitoring and surveillance techniques. They install data networks, fire and burglar alarm systems, access control systems, video monitoring systems, and telecommunication installation; they also operate these installations. They develop, install, configure and parameterize software and test IT systems. Moreover, they work independently, take economic and environmental concerns into consideration, and observe the relevant technical regulations and safety rules and coordinate their work with the preceding and following activities. They often work as part of a team [ibid.]. Vocationally organised work is becoming multidimensional, and hence the qualification requirements (the competences) in today’s workplace are also multidimensional (e.g. Winther and Achtenhagen, 2009; The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing IJRVET 2015 111 Table 4.3: Student performance at different levels of the cognitive process (out of 100) Cognitive process levels Marks obtained (in %) SD Med Mod Min/Max Apply 2.6 2.9 2.2 0 0/11 Understand 10.0 8.2 8.9 4.4 0/37.8 Remember 18.2 10.1 18.8 21.9 0/51.6 As mentioned earlier, in measuring student performance, we included six classes of polytechnic institutes in Bangladesh. We used the general linear model and univariate variance analysis (ANOVA) to investigate whether there were any differences in the performance among institutions/classes. A profile of the different class averages of student performance is presented in Fig. 1. Figure 1: Profile of class means of student performance Table 4.4: Results of ANOVA test. In the results of the ANOVA test (see Table 4.4), that is, the F value = 14.43, the significance of the F (Sig. p <0.001) and the partial eta squared (η2p) show that there are significance differences when the six classes/institutes are compared. Although each polytechnic differs in performance when compared with the others, we further examined these classes/institutes to identify any performance similarities; therefore, we applied Student Newman-Keuls test (also labelled as “post-hoc” analysis). This test result showed that the student performance in these six clas- F. A. Haolader, M. R. Ali & K. M. Foysol IJRVET 2015 112 ses/institutes can be grouped into three sub-sets of classes (see Table 4.5). The lowest performance was shown by a public polytechnic outside Dhaka. A women’s polytechnic in Dhaka performed the best among all the participating classes/institutes in the test. The rest showed nearly equal performance in the competence test. Table 4.5: The class means and the homogeneous sub-sets Student-Newman-Keuls a,b,c Class N Sub-set of classes 1 2 3 10351 19 3,000 11151 38 8,737 10151 28 9,429 10251 37 9,932 11251 13 10,154 10141 25 13,220 Sig. 1,000 604 1,000 Means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed. Based on observed means. The error term is Mean Square (Error) = 15,228. a. Uses Harmonic Mean Sample Size = 23,201. b. The group sizes are unequal. The harmonic means of the group sizes are unequal. The Harmonic mean of the group sizes is used. Type I error levels are not guaranteed. c. Alpha = ,05. It is hard to comment on these overall and individual class performances; however, as mentioned earlier, student performance development depends on many factors, not only on the learning-teaching process or materials, institutional learning environment or individual activities but also on other external factors, such as sociopolitical-economic conditions, which are not addressed in this study. 5 Conclusions, Discussion and Recommendations This study mainly focused on learning/teaching materials and the curriculum implementation process (course delivery and assessment) and finally assessed the level of student achievement at the end of the four-year Diploma-in-Engineering study programme/course. The findings of this study are discussed in the following three sections: The status of learning/teaching materials It is usual that in determining the learning content of learning/teaching media for technical and vocational levels of education, there is an essential overlapping area between the professional knowledge of university graduates, who require (high profile) professional knowledge, and the professional knowledge of TVET institution graduates (Nickolaus 2008, p. 58, with reference to Grüner 1978, p. 78). How- The Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing IJRVET 2015 113 ever, technical knowledge is to be delivered to the technicians/skilled workers in a simplified form, whereas other type of knowledge (for example, DIN rules and regulations and IEC standards) within this common (overlapping) area can be shared by both groups of professionals (ibid.). For a simplification of the knowledge form, didactic reduction methodologies (e.g. the didactic reduction according to Hering, 1998; Grüner, 1978) can be applied (Nickolaus, 2006, p. 59). Furthermore, in designing learning/teaching media, one must know what functions (the media) should be fulfilled (visualization, information, etc.) and what process should be integrated into the curriculum (cognitive structures, methodical procedure, etc.). On this level, we must also know what pre-knowledge and preexperience learners already have. In short, the media should support learners in achieving the intended learning objectives (LOs). From these perspectives, this research study finds that a major share of the content of the learning materials contain declarative (factual and conceptual) knowledge at the cognitive process levels of remembering and understanding. Relatively less emphasis is on the content/tasks which are practical and relevant and demand the cognitive process level of apply or higher. Although some of the medium-level Bengali textbooks explain conceptual knowledge nicely, in several cases it is explained using (high level) mathematics, ignoring the conception of didactic reduction methodologies. Similarly, a reference book for an applied math course does not include (occupation specific) tasks explaining how mathematical competences can be applied in solving occupation-related technical tasks. Therefore, it can be concluded that many of the Bengali medium-level reference books written for polytechnic education and used as main learning/teaching materials require improved designs in quality, covering well-balanced content from different levels of cognitive processes and types of knowledge. Practicing the Taxonomy in Classrooms and Labs About half of the polytechnic teachers who participated in the interview have never heard of the taxonomy of educational/learning objectives. Teachers in this category are either newly recruited (for specific projects) or work on a part-time basis despite a huge number of vacant regular teaching posts. The rest of the teachers are informed of the taxonomy; however, they seldom put importance on student achievement with respect to the desired learning outcomes as stated in the curricula, but rather they address contents which are usually common and frequent in the exams, whereby the focus is how their students can achieve an “A+” (or 80% or above marks) on the final exam. Teachers in this category have a few years or more of teaching experience. They have undergone pedagogical and technical training with a duration ranging from some weeks to months. Some of them have formal qualifications, such as a diploma/bachelor’s degree in Technical Education. Even some of the experienced teachers have post-graduate level qualifications. Statistics on teachers’ background information, such as educational qualification, pedagogical training, and industrial exposure, are not available. Teachers in classrooms put less emphasis on practical, relevant tasks; rather, they spend a major portion of the class time in delivering theoretical content. In the labs, teachers put more effort into practicing practical and relevant tasks which can be categorised at higher levels of the taxonomy. However, due to management policy and the large class loads per teacher (due to a teacher shortage), they hardly have enough time for preparing lab specification sheets and the like. F. A. Haolader, M. R. Ali & K. M. Foysol IJRVET 2015 114 Student Performance in a Competence Test The results of the competence test support the findings stated in Section 4.1 and 4.2., where students’ showed relatively better performance in the case of solving tasks in the remember category and less performance in the case of tasks at the levels of understand, apply or higher. However, as mentioned earlier, student performance depends on many other factors. In this study, we focus only on learning/teaching materials and the teaching and assessment practices of teachers, assuming the effect of other factors on the development of student performance as constant. Further, the relative weak performance in the competence test can be explained such that the students were not used to these kinds of tasks; in other words, the tasks were “uncommon” to them. They are more accustomed to schoollike tasks, where students learn about individual components separately, not in a workplace-like situation, where components are usually connected and function together in a (complex) system. This study was limited to polytechnic educations in Bangladesh in the field of electronics technology. Therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalised. The authors suggest further studies regarding the structure of curricular content, content delivery, and competence assessment following other approaches/models, such as work process knowledge (Boreham and Fischer, 2009) holistic problem solving (Rauner, et al., 2013, p. 165), and subject-based or learning-area-based approaches (KMK, 2007), as well as studies of other institutional and individual context factors. However, to prepare diploma engineers with “a very broad range of specialised, cognitive and practical skill and comprehensive actual and theoretical knowledge, and ability to creatively solve problems within an occupational activity” (Moore, 2009; NTVQ, 2012), the authors suggest, among others, that: - Quality learning/teaching media should be developed with a particular focus on future occupation-relevant content covering relatively higher levels of learning taxonomy. In translated Bengali books, common terminology should be used in all cases; however, students and teachers should be encouraged to use English in teaching/learning, such as using medium-quality English books, in communication and presentation of occupational tasks/assignments. - In implementing the curriculum, teachers should focus on contents that are at higher levels of the taxonomy. Frequent technical as well as vocational pedagogical training should be arranged for teachers, with a particular focus on the application of taxonomy for teaching, learning and assessing. - Some of the assessment tasks should be project based with test items constructed from the project(s), covering different levels of taxonomy. Project(s) should be practical and relevant, not synthetic; however, it can be didactically simplified. Solving the test items of the level apply/analyze should demand generation of new knowledge (“knowledge generation”) using factual/conceptual knowledge. The required information could be supplied through a data sheet. - In labs, practical tasks should be designed in such a way that they require the use of handbooks/data sheets. Thus, students will become familiar and accustomed to using technical data in solving higher level tasks. These practices will enhance students’ skills in designing, developing, installing and configuring new devices/systems. 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