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Recognition vs. Recall

Where did I put that again?

One of the things that’s been fairly constant in my life over the last few weeks — that rediscovery stuff is hard, particularly when you try to do it too quickly.  It’s caused me to recognize that there’s information I’ve seen before but I couldn’t recall it on command, nor can I even remember where I saw it again.

It reminded me of some of the instructional design research I did several years ago while I was doing a lot of development editing for books.  I ran across Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, while I can’t say that I agree with every bit of the classification or the revision of the work.  However, it’s interesting because it causes you to think about how we teach and learn in a different way than we most folks think about it.

What caused me to think about it was the difference between recognition and recall.  These are at the bottom most levels of the taxonomy.  The most basic level is recognition.  That means that if someone asked you what it was you couldn’t tell them but if they say it to you — you will recognize that you heard it before.  Taking from my daily life…  My wife asks me to pickup paper plates from the grocery store.  I walk into the store and can’t remember what it was that my wife asked me for.  (I lacked recall.)  However, my friend, who co-manages the store walks up to me and starts offering ideas on what it might be: bread, milk, cheese, etc.  When he hits paper plates I immediately recognize that it what I’m there for.

The trick, for me, is to figure out how to get more of the stuff I read and take in into the recall category and less in the recognition category.  I could be struggling for higher levels, levels that allow me to do things with the information but for now, I’d be happy to hit recall all the time.

Excuse me while I go look for my car keys…

If you’re interested in learning more about how we educate ourselves and others, it’s an interesting read.

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