Students Need MASLOW Before They BLOOM

In another course this semester, we looked at various learning and teaching strategies that had their respective benefits. I want to use this blog post to outline a couple of these strategies that really resonated with me, in addition to how they relate to each other.

To begin, Bloom's Taxonomy is one framework that is useful in helping students move through scaffolded learning. As shown in the image below, the aim is to bring students from the most basic levels (e.g., remembering, understanding, etc.) towards the higher levels (e.g., evaluating, creating). This framework was published in 1956 with education in mind – the goal was to help educators/teachers plan how to best teach a particular lesson, concept, or skill. Rather than emphasizing memorization and fact recall, Bloom's Taxonomy was designed to have students truly think deeply about the material, apply their knowledge in various contexts, and continue to generate new ideas. The combination of these processes means that students are working towards developing their problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills, valuable in their academic pursuits and lives outside of the classroom. 

However, we also examined Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a theory that proposes the idea of basic human needs that must be satisfied prior to moving up the levels (shown below). To contrast this idea with Bloom's Taxonomy, we have to ask ourselves: Will students truly be able to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create if they come to class hungry? Tired? Stressed? This idea of Bloom's Taxonomy, while valuable in a teaching context, will be useless to students who do not have fulfilled physiological and safety needs, for example. Thus, educators have a responsibility to observe and take note of what students may require in order to be in a successful headspace for learning – otherwise, Bloom's Taxonomy is somewhat useless. Methods in which teachers can support students include providing food or snacks for a classroom, checking in with emotional well-being, creating a safe and predictable learning environment, and establishing belonging in the classroom. If these practices can be prioritized, we as educators will be setting the stage for a better learning environment in which we can implement Bloom's Taxonomy as well.

The quote used in class to help us remember the relationship between Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Bloom's Taxonomy was, "students need Maslow before they Bloom." I really thought about this quote following the class because of how well it visualizes the relationship and interconnectedness of both teaching strategies. I hope you find it just as useful!

The following were used as references for the content in this post:

https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/blooms-taxonomy

https://www.simplypsychology.org/blooms-taxonomy.html 

https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html 

                                                                Courtesy of AnikaS@OTU