Significant Learning
Denise Domizi November 6th, 2009
When I began my graduate program in Instructional Technology (soon to be more aptly named, Learning, Design, and Technology), I remember being somewhat uneasy in one of my first classes when I learned that, instead of being taught by my professor, we would each be choosing a topic to learn more about and then teaching this topic to the class. I distinctly remember thinking, “but the professors are the experts. I want to learn from them, not a bunch of people who know no more about it than I do.”
It took me a while to get away from this orientation, but this program was (for the most part) fiercely constructivist, and I got used to this paradigm and even came to embrace it. I learned that my professors were continuing to learn just like I was, and this was a decided shift in the way that I had previously understood what professors were all about (and a shift to how I was taught as an undergrad). I also learned that I was engaging with the material in a much deeper way than I would have if I was being lectured to, and more importantly, I was learning how to learn the material on my own.
In Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning, “Learning how to learn” is one of his six categories. Unlike Bloom’s Taxonomy, Fink’s is not hierarchical, and he sees each of these “different kinds of learning” as interactive. In Fink’s words,
When students and teachers think about what students can learn that is truly significant, their answers usually include, but do not focus on, “understand and remember” kinds of learning. More often they emphasize such things as critical thinking, learning how to creatively use knowledge from the course, learning to solve real-world problems, changing the way students think about themselves and others, realizing the importance of life-long learning, etc.
Maryellen Weimer’s blog post today excerpts C. Roland Christensen, whose statement also seems to support Fink’s ideas:
I believe that what my students become is as important as what they learn. The endpoint of teaching is as much human as intellectual growth. Where qualities of person are as central as qualities of mind … we must engage the whole being of students so that they become open and receptive to multiple levels of understanding. And we must engage our whole selves as well. I not only teach what I know, but what I am.
When you think about the courses you teach, where do your Big Dreams for your students fit in the taxonomy?

Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning
For more about Fink’s Taxonomy and designing courses for significant learning, download this pdf from his website.