Abstract:

From a global perspective and systemic approach, education is aimed at preparing good citizens and competitive professionals, who will contribute to enhance competitiveness at the organizational and country level. Talent development efforts create future value and progress, so that it must become a priority, being individuals a critical “piece” in providing value.

Bloom's taxonomy has received considerable recognition as a framework for drafting learning outcomes, curriculum assessment and analysis, evaluation, and overall as a metacognitive learning framework. It contains six categories of cognitive skills, ranging from lower-order skills that require less cognitive processing (Remembering, Comprehension and Application), to higher-order skills, requiring deeper learning and a greater degree of cognitive processing (Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation).

A learning diary is a review and reflection of the knowledge and skills participants acquired during a specific event, such a course or topic. Basically, a learning diary reflects what students have learned from that part of the course, considering their prior own experiences, knowledge and related readings. The written diary also gives feedback to the educators and education managers on how students’ learning process has proceeded.

As a reflection tool, a learning diary promotes metacognitive thinking through individual reflection on course content. When writing a learning diary, students recall what they have learned, reflect on their understanding, and how they can apply the concepts, facts and ideas, the three basic levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. They also can be encouraged, in the learning diary instructions, to analyze the information and knowledge acquired, apply it to certain situations, judging the value of information and ideas, and combining the information to create a new whole or new ideas. The later respond to high-order skills, of increasing importance for organizations in the XXI century.

As a feedback-assessment tool, a learning diary provides assessment on the effectiveness of the education process. The information received complements data collected through other monitoring and assessment tools, and it should be analyzed in an integrated way, as basis for improvement plans.

This paper aims to investigate the benefits of learning diaries in view for developing high-order skills. In our study, of qualitative nature, the research question was: how learning diaries support the development of the students’ high-order skills? We collected learning diaries in two education institutions:
1) a university in Finland, in an intensive course on management, delivered to international students in an annual basis from 2009 to 2023;
2) a business school in Spain, in a master degree course (MBA), delivered to international students in two editions (2022, 2023). Learning diaries were gathered from 278 students from 21 nationalities. Content analysis, of interpretative nature, was applied, to identify how many of the learning diaries included responses related to high-order skills, and what kind of feedback was provided. The analysis was further elaborated and displayed with examples (verbatims).

By responding the research question, the paper advances the understanding on the use of learning diaries as a tool for metacognition development, and for integrative evaluation and assessment of student learning and education process, considering Bloom’s Taxonomy outcomes.

Keywords:

Assessment, Bloom’s Taxonomy, competitiveness, education, high-order skills, learning diary, learning outcome, metacognition.