DEVELOPING QUESTIONS
FOR
SCRIPTURE STUDY THAT SUPPORT MAXIMUM
LEARNING
JAN PARON, PHD
ALL NATIONS LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
Bloom’s Taxonomy:
Six Levels for Understanding
Six Levels of Understanding
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When teaching, one needs to address understanding in
six different levels: knowledge, comprehension,
application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning, each level is a
building block for understanding the next.
Beginning with the most basic level, which is knowledge,
understanding becomes progressively more
complex. The most complex is evaluation.
Six Levels of Understanding
Learning Progression of the Six Levels of Understanding
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
Fundamental level of understanding
Complex & advanced levels of understanding
Six Levels of Understanding
When developing questions and activities associated
with your selected scripture study, you should address
each level of understanding
Six Levels of Understanding
The length of time you allow for at each level is
determined by the prior knowledge of the audience.
Make adjustments and adaptations to time and
approach, but include questions representative of all
understanding levels.
Six Levels of Understanding
Let’s review the basic meaning of each level of
understanding.
Six Levels of Understanding
Knowledge
Function
Associated
Action Verbs
Example
• Recognize information, ideas, and principles
• List, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label,
collect, examine, tabulate, quote, name, who,
when, where, etc.
• Define the principles of individual and communal
ministry
• Describe the “temptation to be spectacular.”
Six Levels of Understanding
Comprehension
Function
• Comprehends or interprets scripture or text
based on prior meaning
Associated
Action Verbs
• Summarize, describe, interpret, contrast, predict,
associate, distinguish, estimate, differentiate,
discuss, extend
Example
• Discuss how the “temptation to be spectacular”
impacts communal ministry
Six Levels of Understanding
Application
Function
• Selects, transfers, and uses data and principles
to complete a life task with minimum direction
Associated
Action Verbs
• Apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete,
illustrate, show, solve, examine, modify, relate,
change, classify, experiment, and discover
Example
• Think of a situation involving communal ministry.
Relate how you would avoid the “temptation to
be spectacular” in that situation.
Six Levels of Understanding
Analysis
Function
Associated
Action Verbs
Example
• Thought process in use: can examine, classify,
hypothesize, collect data, and draw conclusions
• Analyze, separate, order, explain, connect,
classify, arrange, divide, compare, select,
explain, infer
• Why do you think Nouwen included a separate
chapter in his book about the “temptation to be
spectacular”?
Six Levels of Understanding
Synthesis
Function
• Originates, integrates, and combines ideas into a
product, plan, or proposal that is new
Associated
Action Verbs
• Combine, integrate, modify, rearrange,
substitute, plan, create, design, invent, what?,
compose, formulate, prepare, generalize, rewrite
Example
• Create a plan showing how you would adjust
your personal and public actions as a mission
team member in Belize, keeping in mind
avoiding the temptations of being spectacular.
Six Levels of Understanding
Evaluate
Function
• Appraises, assesses, criticizes on a basis or
specific standards or criteria.
Associated
Action Verbs
• Assess, decide, rank, grade, test, measure,
recommend, convince, select, judge, explain,
discriminate, support, conclude, compare, and
summarize
Example
• Critique another group’s plan for effectiveness
of actions that show how to avoid the
“temptation to be spectacular” (as a team
member on the Belize mission trip).
Six Levels of Understanding
Guided Practice
Let’s try writing questions for each of the six levels of
understanding for Nouwen’s chapter on “The
Temptation: To Be Spectacular.”
Six Levels of Understanding
Guided Practice
Before you begin, determine your vision for learning
for that chapter. In other words, what is the enduring
understanding you want your students to have when
they walk away from this study?
Six Levels of Understanding
Guided Practice
Here’s my vision or enduring understanding for this
study:
“Each type of ministry environment, whether it be
individually or communally based, poses unique
challenges. As a pastor, one must be acutely aware
of his own fleshly nature and spiritually prepare for
successful ministry regardless of the environment.”
Six Levels of Understanding
References
Acknowledgments go to the authors of “Bloom’s
Taxonomy for Learning.” Bloom and other colleagues
identified the knowledge and skills involved in the
cognitive domain of learning. The six levels of
understanding I explained are actually the major
categories of the cognitive domain from Bloom.
(Bloom, 1956)