Building Competency in Diabetes Education THE ESSENTIALS

11-20 | CHAPTER 11

Table 1. Taxonomy of educational objectives: Cognitive domain Levels of complexity Examples of objectives for your own learning

Examples of objectives for diabetes SME

1. Knowledge

State a definition of cognitive learning.

State a definition of diabetes.

2. Comprehension

• Verbally summarize the concept of levels of learning. • Given a list of objectives, label them as: o Cognitive o Psychomotor o Affective Write a cognitive objective for a specific learning situation. Given a learning experience, topic or program to develop, break the topic down into cognitive, psychomotor or affective areas, identifying levels of complexity. Given the above, develop a learning plan for the cognitive portion of a program.

Explain the term hyperglycemia or high blood glucose in your own words.

3. Application

Relate your symptoms to your blood glucose level. Interpret/explain your blood glucose results in relation to your treatment plan. Interpret the relationship of your blood glucose results to your A1C result. Decide if your present diabetes treatment is meeting your goals for optimal control.

4. Analysis

5. Synthesis

6. Evaluation

Develop evaluation tools to measure the effectiveness and appropriateness of objectives.

A1C = glycated hemoglobin; SME = self-management education Adapted from Redman, The Practice of Education (31)

The taxonomy of educational objectives repeats this same leveling process with the psychomotor and affective domains, resulting in a very complex system. In SME, we have traditionally grouped the six levels into three — knowledge, application and critical thinking — and we integrate cognitive, psychomotor and affective objectives into a single lesson plan. A myth circulating widely among educators is that cognitive learning is easiest, and that it should be taught first. For instance, lesson plans almost always follow the same order — what, why, when and how — but is this the best approach? Consider the patient learning to take insulin who is typically anxious about the actual injection. It may be better to address the