Abstract:

There is a common sense of concern among all participants involved in the teaching and learning process when it comes to educational evaluation. The evaluation stage involves the systematic and organized collection of data, as well as their interpretation, to adjust and redirect the educational process, and correct faults and deviations. To achieve the goals of an evaluation, it is important to focus on the learning process and reflect on the motivational aspects implicit in it. In chemistry teaching, an important tool that can provide more interest and motivation for students are the laboratory classes [1].

For experimental activity to achieve its main goals, it must be carried out in such a way that it becomes a process of questioning, debating, and validating arguments. However, better exploitation of the experimental classes requires the establishment of evaluation criteria, with clear objectives and focused on all the stages of the learning process. In this sense, an interesting tool to help establish the goals to be achieved is Bloom's Taxonomy.

Bloom's taxonomy consists of a tool intended to support the identification of a cognitive hierarchical structure with well-defined educational objectives, from the simplest to the most complex, covering six main categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Combined with the definition of each of these levels of the cognitive domain is a set of suggested associated verbs, which help in the development of the evaluation questions to be applied in each of the categories of the taxonomy [2]. Thus, for the student to acquire the skills of the next level, it is necessary to have acquired skills of the previous level.

In this work, we present a proposal for the application of Bloom's Taxonomy in laboratory classes in the subject of Inorganic Chemistry for students of the second year of the Chemistry Degree. The methodology consisted in preparing questionnaires using Bloom's Taxonomy cognitive levels, to be taken before and after each experimental class. The first three cognitive levels (Knowledge, Comprehension, and Application) were used in the elaboration of previous questions, with the objective of remembering concepts studied in theoretical classes and preparing the student to perform the experiment. The last three cognitive levels (Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation) were used in the elaboration of activities after the experimental class, aiming to critically reflect on the observed phenomena and how they relate to daily situations.

The first reflections of this study showed that Bloom's Taxonomy played an important role both as a tool for the analysis and evaluation of teaching-learning and as a guide in the planning and organization of the experimental lesson. A direct consequence of this was the presence of students who were better prepared to perform the practical lesson, achieving a better understanding of the observed phenomena.

Keywords:

Chemistry Teaching, Higher Education, Bloom's Taxonomy, Evaluation.