How To Use Bloom's Taxonomy To Improve The Effectiveness of Quality Assurance Activities

I have been reading a book by Ryan Clements called, "Unsuited & Find Empowerment: How We Can Reject Conventional Career Advice."  The following quote from this book inspired the topic for this blog post:

"When we immerse ourselves in our field, through continual repetition and

practice we begin to understand what we do on a deeper level."

All of us who assure the quality of food would like everyone who works in the plant to understand what they are doing on a deeper level.  My role as a quality assurance professional is not only to perform the daily line checks and finished good chemical analyses, but also to encourage the movement toward this deeper level of understanding in everyone I interact with throughout the day.  How the quality assurance professional behaves, communicates, and responds to problems influence the plant's perception of quality.  On March 13, 2012, Jimena Maria Calfa, Senior ASQ Member, published a blog post called, "How do you 'sell' quality?" In her post, she mentions that a positive, proactive approach to addressing problems, rather than constantly trying to correct people at their job, will encourage the impression that quality improvements are good.  She also recommends the quality professional to take time to get to know the line operators and technicians on the floor to establish a sense of trust between the departments and to encourage teamwork.  These are great suggestions.  Quality assurance professionals, and those who train them, can also borrow theories from the field of education to take these suggestions even farther.

As a classroom teacher, I learned how to develop classroom activities and lessons that would move my students toward a deeper level of understanding.  I describe this deeper level of understanding as the point at which the information becomes internalized and becomes "owned" by the student.  This achievement does not happen overnight; it takes time to develop and can be encouraged through the use of Bloom's Taxonomy.  Bloom's Taxonomy is a list of six levels of reasoning skills proposed by Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s.  Bloom proposed that if an educator designs lessons and activities that incorporate skills from each of the levels, then the student will reach a deeper level of understanding.  The six levels of reasoning are:

Knowledge (Remembering)

Comprehension (Understanding)

Application (Applying)

Analysis (Analyzing)

Synthesis (Evaluating)

Evaluation (Creating)

Knowledge (Remembering) represents the basic skill level in which the student can memorize and list information, for example.  As the educator progresses down the list (or up the pyramid), the student must utilize the information learned in more meaningful ways.  As quality assurance professionals, we can use Bloom's Taxonomy to develop more meaningful audit questions and training materials to encourage the development of deeper understanding. For example, following an allergen training video, the following questions could be asked:

Can you identify all the food allergens listed on this package label?

Explain why we use colored scoops?

Can you recommend a better flow pattern for your work area that would improve the control cross-contact?

It is fun watching people grow and learn.  By incorporating these theories into your daily routine, the quality professional can become an effective teacher, making the daily routine more meaningful for everyone.

How do you encourage deeper understanding?

I would love to hear from your.  Please leave your comments.