MARZANO'S TAXONOMY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS FOR - ECONOMÍA - 2024

The taxonomy Marzano is a rating system developed by Marzano educational goals and Kendall based on the Taxonomy, one of the best known in the field. This classification of goals was created primarily to incorporate new insights into how humans process information.

These discoveries were made over the decades that followed the publication of Bloom's original taxonomy. The authors of Kendall's taxonomy believed that, although Bloom wanted to create a practical theory that would help create educational goals, he was unsuccessful in this endeavor.

On the contrary, he created a theoretical system that did not have a great impact on the school curriculum. Therefore, these authors tried to create a more practical taxonomy that would help improve the educational system. By creating a more applicable classification system, teachers could better tailor their teaching to their students.

What is Marzano's taxonomy?

Marzano's taxonomy is mainly made up of two dimensions that interact with each other: knowledge domains and processing levels.

- Knowledge domains

There are three domains of knowledge: information, mental procedures and psychomotor procedures. It is the type of learning that a student can carry out.

Marzano's taxonomy considers that the knowledge that we can learn is mainly of three types:

information

It involves the acquisition of pure data, such as dates, historical events, or theories. This is what we commonly understand as "knowledge." It is a purely mental learning.

Mental procedures

They are ways of thinking that require taking steps to achieve a goal. For example, the application of mathematical formulas or a system of logical thought would be types of mental procedures. So would learning to read or speak a new language.

Psychomotor procedures

They are all the knowledge related to the use of the body and physical abilities. Within this classification we can find all sports skills and other skills such as writing or playing an instrument.

- Processing levels

Although they are usually divided into three (cognitive, metacognitive, and internal or self), in practice they are usually divided into six sublevels. It is the level of depth with which the student can acquire new knowledge.

The classification of the processing levels is as follows:

The cognitive level

The information is still conscious. Here we can find four sublevels, which are the following: recovery, understanding, analysis and use of knowledge.

The metacognitive level

New knowledge is applied to regulate one's own mental processes. Thanks to metacognitive learning, you can set goals and self-regulate to achieve them.

Internal level or

It occurs when new knowledge affects the belief system of the individual who acquires it.

Both classifications interact with each other, so within each of the three types of learning we can find a description of the six levels of processing.

What is it for?

Gradual knowledge increase

The taxonomy created by Marzano and Kendall is more practice-oriented, in such a way that it focuses on the design of specific tasks to increase the level of knowledge of the learner gradually. This improvement in the design is achieved, above all, taking into account processes that were not present in Bloom's taxonomy.

Some of these processes that Marzano and Kendall included in their taxonomy are the emotions, the beliefs of the person, their self-knowledge and the ability to create goals. All these processes are part of what is known in the research world as metacognition.

More focused on adults

Because metacognition develops over the years, Marzano and Kendall's taxonomy is more oriented to working with adults and for the acquisition of professional skills. However, it can also be used when working with children.

The most important part of the work of these authors is its theoretical foundation; that is, the inclusion of all the scientific knowledge created in recent decades on the functioning of human learning.

Advantage

Thanks to the addition of this knowledge, Marzano's taxonomy has some advantages over Bloom's:

- Greater number of suggestions to work with the learning objectives, depending on whether it is pure information, mental procedures or psychomotor procedures.

- Better knowledge about certain fundamental processes in learning, such as emotion, memory, motivation and metacognition.

- Greater precision when creating learning objectives, having a more specific map of the types of knowledge that can be acquired and the way in which they are acquired.

- Due to this greater precision when creating objectives, it can also be more easily evaluated if these have been achieved.

Differences from Bloom's taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Bloom's taxonomy and Marzano's is the type of learning that both authors believe can be done.

- On the one hand, Bloom suggested that knowledge can be of three types: cognitive (what we have called information in Marzano's taxonomy), psychomotor (the equivalent of psychomotor procedures), and affective (related to emotions and forms of feel).

- On the contrary, Marzano and Kendall consider that emotions are not a separate knowledge system, but that they are something that mediates the acquisition of all other types of knowledge.

Theoretical foundation

In addition to this fundamental difference in the classification of knowledge, Marzano's taxonomy is much more research-based than Bloom's.

Due to criticism of the previous classification system by many theorists, Marzano and Kendall set out to improve the already existing taxonomy with the new insights generated by cognitive research.

As a result, the theoretical foundation of Marzano's taxonomy is much stronger than that of its predecessor.

About Marzano and Kendall

Robert J. Marzano

American educational researcher. He has published more than 200 articles on education, cognition, educational leadership or developing practical programs for teachers and trainers. In turn, he is the author or co-author of more than 50 books.

He has conducted research and educational theories on the topics of standards-based assessment, cognition, high-performance teaching strategies, and school leadership, including developing practical programs and tools for teachers and administrators in K-12 schools.

John S. Kendall

With a degree in Psychology, he served as a professor at Gustavus Adolphus College for more than 30 years.

References

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2. Gallardo Córdoba, 2009. "The New Taxonomy of Marzano and Kendall: an alternative to enrich educational work from its planning". New Taxonomy Manual Marzano and Kendall. Recovered from cca.org.mx
3. "Taxonomy of Marzano" in: Alex Duve. Retrieved on: March 6, 2018 from Alex Duve: alexduve.com.
4. "Understanding Taxonomy" in: Marzano's Taxonomy. Retrieved on: March 6, 2018 from Taxonomy of Marzano: taxonomiamarzano.weebly.com.
5. "Comparison of Taxonomies: Bloom, Marzano and Webb" in: Educational Therapy. Retrieved on: March 6, 2018 from Educational Therapy:oterapiaeducativa.wordpress.com.