Webb's depth of knowledge

How do educators create the ideal mix of content coverage while at the same time training students to think and analyze novel situations? Just keeping up with local, state, and national standards leaves the average teacher overwhelmed and wondering how they will ever cover all the content that their students might be tested on. But worrying about content coverage should be secondary to teaching students skills and concepts that they can apply in novel situations e.

One strategy for solving this is to make sure that we are teaching students complex thinking while we cover essential content.

Social studies pedagogy

Subscribe to the blog to get the next post emailed to your inbox. In the world of standardized testing, thinking complexity is commonly referred to as depth of knowledge DOK. Questions for students to answer or tasks for them to complete can be categorized on a four-point scale, with each point representing a higher level of thinking complexity.

Difficulty can be defined as statistical fact-based on a certain sample, very few of students get the correct answer. The key distinction is that a complex question requires higher-order thinking skills—for example, thinking through an answer that involves multiple steps. The more steps a student must complete to provide an answer, the greater depth of knowledge required.

Recall a fact, information, or procedure. Identify information in a text, image, or chart. Answers to these types of questions are either correct or incorrect. Examples might be:. Use information or conceptual knowledge.