Cognitive Demand

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It must not be misperceived as lists of topics to be covered from the six standards of the Ohio Academic Content Standards, K–12 Science. The concept of cognitive demand calls attention to this fact and highlights the cognitive skills that students must possess in order to be successful in their science learning.

Here are the four key cognitive demand areas:

Recalling and Identifying Accurate Science

• Students provide and identify accurate statements about previously learned, scientifically valid, facts, concepts, and relationships described by the Ohio Academic Content Standards, K–12 Science.
• Teachers use a variety of standards-based motivators to engage students’ thinking to help them access previously learned science knowledge and skills.

Communicating Understanding and Analyzing Science Information

• Students analyze scientific information and communicate scientifically, giving rich investigative scenarios and valid scientific data and information.
• Teachers use questioning and solid understanding of science content and content-pedagogy to facilitate students’ exploration of standards-based questions, challenge students’ misconceptions, and help students develop scientifically valid conceptions and explanations.

Demonstrating Investigation Processes of Science

• Students use scientific inquiry skills, grounded in standards-based science content.
• Teachers integrate the teaching of benchmarks for Scientific Inquiry and Scientific Ways of Knowing into opportunities for students to conduct investigations aligned with the content standards.

Applying Concepts and Making Relevant Connections with Science

• Students apply science in the context of individuals and society, and scientifically analyze consequences and alternatives, giving rich, real-world, situations and technological problem-solving scenarios.
• Teachers integrate the teaching of benchmarks for Science and Technology, Scientific Inquiry, and Scientific Ways of Knowing into opportunities to help students contextualize and expand their understanding of the science content standards.

The focus of these four cognitive demands is not to arrive at a hierarchy to sort student work and describe assessment tasks based on various performance verbs, but rather to support science teachers’ efforts to foster and monitor inquiry-based student learning opportunities.

Bloom’s taxonomy is too general for successful implementation of the Ohio Academic Content Standards for science, the National Science Education Standards, or the Benchmarks for Science Literacy. While the cognitive demands are not from Bloom’s taxonomy, cognitive demands appropriately subsume Bloom’s verbs.