Application Knowledge Objectives

Teachers can categorize an objective as Application Knowledge if they consider that students demonstrate mastery of the objective when they are able to recognize whether novel objects or actions are examples of the generalization that is appropriate for the objective. In order for teachers to consider that a certain objective refers to Application Knowledge, they must be able to identify a generalization for the objective. The generalization is usually identified in the objective. Here are examples of objectives derived from a variety of subjects and curriculum materials that can be categorized as Application Knowledge because they, more or less, identify the generalization that would be learned as Application Knowledge.

POSSIBLE APPLICATION KNOWLEDGE OBJECTIVES

Social Studies

1. Understand that groups of people form governments in order to make decisions that affect all

members of the society. People in a democracy govern themselves directly or through the

persons they elect.

2. Apply their knowledge that the Constitution of the United States is the basis for the way our

government works.

3. Be able to demonstrate that individuals differ in physical traits because of heredity, but that

their likenesses are greater than their differences.

Science

1. Identify examples which show that metabolically active cells are usually small because

materials can move into, through and out of small cells quickly.

2. Understand that the stars and the sun seem to rise in the east, move across the sky from the

east to west, and set in the west because the earth is spinning in an easterly direction.

3. Know that levers make it easier to lift heavy weights because they shift some of the weight to

a fulcrum. Moving the fulcrum to different places on a bar makes the same object harder or

easier to lift.

Mathematics

1. Recognize examples of the fraction one-half.

2. Understand the principle of place value for ones, tens and hundreds.

3. Demonstrate that in a plane, if two lines are perpendicular to the same line, they are parallel.

Language

1. Realize that good writers avoid redundancy by expressing their ideas in ass few words as

possible.

2. Demonstrate that words beginning with the written letter b begin with the same sound in the

words boy, bat and bone.

3. Pick out in selections they have written examples of the major story elements of narrative

text: Setting, Theme, Plot and Resolution.

Most of these objectives would refer to Recall Knowledge if their wordings were treated as target information to be memorized more or less as stated in the objective. For example, the third science objective would refer to Recall Knowledge if this was the Assessment Task for it: Why do levers make it easier to lift heavy weights? The task refers to Recall Knowledge because it asks students to retrieve verbal information from long-term memory pretty much as it was originally encoded. The third science objective would refer to Application Knowledge only if the Assessment Task consists of objects or actions that are examples and non-examples of the generalization fulcrum that students have not seen before, and students are asked to identify which are examples, and then to explain why each is either an example or non-example. Students often fail to learn desired Application Knowledge because their teachers confuse it with Recall Knowledge. Consequently, students are able to recite definitions of generalizations but are unable to recognize novel objects and actions that are examples of those generalizations.

The next five posts deal with Assessment Tasks for Application Knowledge. These tasks are very important because they provide the teacher a frame of reference for instruction, and a basis for diagnosing students' moment-by-moment learning of Application Knowledge. In addition, Assessment Tasks for Application Knowledge look like the Application-Practice Tasks that are used in the second step of instructing for Application Knowledge. This is analogous to the way Assessment Tasks for Recall Knowledge look like the Recall-Practice Tasks that are used in the second step of instructing for Recall Knowledge.