The Problem of Knowing Without Understanding – Effectiviology

Bloom's taxonomy describes six major types of abilities based on educational goals:

• Remembering: Recalling the relevant information from long-term memory.
• Understanding information: Interpreting it, summarising, explaining, and giving relevant examples.
• Application: Implementing information.
• Analysing, such as organising it and understanding how these parts relate to each other.
• Evaluating: Critiquing the information and making relevant judgments.
• Creating new things based on the information.

It is important to understand the difference between knowledge-telling and knowledge building.

• Knowledge-telling is a shallow engagement with knowledge, generally by reading or memorising without analysing or reflecting.
• Knowledge-building is engaging deeply with study material by analysing it in-depth and looking at it from various angles.

There are two main approaches in education to avoid inert knowledge:

Teach in a way that encourages the development of active knowledge. When teaching students about a certain concept,

• help them to understand what it means,
• how it connects to other things, and
• how to apply the information in practice.

Encourage people to learn in a way that encourages the development of active knowledge.

• Explain the concept of inert knowledge to students.
• Explain why it is a problem
• Encourage them to ask themselves guiding questions when they learn new material.