An Assessment of Cognitive Domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy Use in the Exercises of Grade-V English Textbook

Abstract

The quality of textbooks has always been a topic of discussion in Pakistan. A textbook is considered the backbone of instruction, therefore, its quality highly affects the teaching and learning processes. The government of Pakistan designed Single National Curriculum (SNC) 2020 intending to provide one curriculum for all systems of education in Pakistan i.e. public schools, private schools, and madrassas. In phase-I, textbooks from grades I-V were developed for different subjects. With the publication of the SNC document, a debate started among publishers throughout the country to revise textbooks across different boards. Since the SNC is a newly introduced initiative of the government, therefore, a knowledge gap exists to analyze the textbook developed under the guidelines of the SNC. This study aimed to examine the exercises of SNC English textbook for grade V prescribed by the Punjab textbook board (PTB). The quality of textbooks was analyzed through different methods. The aassessment of the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the textbook exercises was checked using checklist method. A validated checklist was used to examine the use of cognitive levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives in the textbook exercises. The research was descriptive with positivist philosophical paradigm; research method was quantitative, and the tool of inquiry was observation. The frequency of observations in the textbook were assessed against cognitive domain, and recorded in the checklist until completing the last exercise question. The results reported dominance of lower-order thinking skills in the textbook exercises of grade V. The recommendations include that activity-based exercises can foster higher-order thinking in students. Future studies focus on developing observation tools to examine in-class factors which influence students’ attainment of higher-order thinking skills in learning.