Bloom’s taxonomy of learning is a framework of educational learning objectives classified by their difficulty and scope. This taxonomy has a multitude of uses and implementations in studying and academic writing. The article by Babbitt (2018) talks about how taxonomy can be related to metacognition and how it can be implemented by a writer to find their voice. First, she identifies metacognition as an abstract concept of “thinking about thinking” (Babbitt, 2018).
This skill is very important in academic writing, because a writer has to engage not only with their own thought process, but also with the processes of the authors whose sources and thoughts they inspect and reference. In order to fully understand what the others are trying to convey, the understanding of their own thought process is crucial. Bloom’s taxonomy offers a good blueprint for engaging metacognitively with every stage of the writing process.
The article identifies three stages of transformation as a writer. These stages include knowledge-telling, knowledge-transforming, and knowledge-crafting (Babbitt, 2018). Knowledge-telling is the first step, where literature is hardly engaged at all. When children are taught to write their own thoughts – that is the knowledge-telling process. Knowledge-transforming occurs in middle to high-schooling, when they are taught to interact with texts and be capable of comparing and contrasting different points of view. Knowledge-crafting stage comes when engaging with higher education, and having to engage academic texts not just to reproduce what they say, but to create new knowledge (Babbitt, 2018. This process is congruent with Bloom’s taxonomy, as different stages of the pyramid correspond to various learning and engagement processes, ending up with evaluation and creation.
If we look at the stages of being made into a writer, thus, Bloom’s taxonomy is applied to each and every one. At the stage I am currently at, I primarily engage in evaluation and creation stages of the model. However, it is impossible to properly implement those in academic writing without going through all the steps leading to them first. I need to remember, understand, analyze, and apply the material first. I think that what helps a person find their own voice as a writer is the level to which they engage with the base of the pyramid prior to reaching the top.
The depth of understanding of not just the material, but the authors and oneself when writing is what creates a unique perspective. Babbitt (2018) agrees with this assessment, stating that the people who take their time to go through every step of the journey while taking their time will offer results drastically different to those who skip and focus on the top of the pyramid.
When finding my personal voice and engaging with the evaluation and creation stages, I will always think about what message the authors of my sources wanted to convey. I will evaluate them for bias, while at the same time engaging in reflection to spot any of my own. I am seeking for my voice to be that of passionless reason, because emotion tends to cloud judgment when it comes to serious and charged topics. At the same time, I recognize that many people who do research have personal stakes on the matter. Denying them the ability to be partial is to deny them being human. I hope I will find balance between the two, and become a better writer in the end.
Reference
Babbitt, K. (2018). Metacognition and the academic writer. Web.