Skip to main content

The Taxonomy of a Group

Benjamin Bloom was an American educational psychologist in the 20th century. His work about learning levels helped to further the discussion about mastering levels of learning and the further need for learning objectives. Within this discussion about individual learning, there are some great principles that can be applied to group life.

First, how does your group demonstrate learning? The picture above demonstrates how an individual walks through learning at the cognitive level. Of course, in learning, there is not only the cognitive level but also the affective and psychomotor.  Basically, this is the head, heart, and hands. However, within our groups, there are ways that we demonstrate how we learn and interact with Scripture. There are times when our focus is on remembering and understanding. This is a broad appeal to group participants as the essence of what we discuss is about what we understand in Scripture about a topic or doctrine. The focus though is for us to move up the levels to an application and beyond analyzing and evaluation of our current lives according to Scripture.

Second, how does your group motivate towards interaction in learning? If we are there only to recall facts and information about the Bible, then we will excel in the lower levels of learning. However, once we begin to ask transformational questions that lead towards analyzing and evaluation, we will demonstrate how our group progresses by the essence of our discussion. We will then be motivated to move further along in our groups together.

Finally, notice how we want to move towards creation. This isn't creating new doctrine nor does it mean that we lose what we understand and remember; instead, it means that we lead our group towards expressing truth in ways that align with Scripture that they haven't experienced before. At the group level, when we encounter Scripture and the call to make disciples, hopefully, this leads our group to the place of where we are "creating" new groups as people are called to serve and lead others in discipleship.

Questions of reflection:

- Am I leading my group only to be one of understanding and remembering? If so, how can I encourage our group to the higher levels of learning?
- Am I demonstrating learning in my own life through the questions that I ask and encourage people to go to?
- Am I leading my group to the place of creating new groups?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discipleship Triangle: Up-In-Out- Super Summer edition

I Corinthians 4:16-17  Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. For this reason, I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. From Paul's words, we can see the encouragement (imperative) is to be an imitator. For this week at Super Summer in the discipleship sessions, we discussed what it means to be an imitator of Jesus Christ.  To be imitators of Jesus Christ is to be rooted in Christ as we recognize the authority and lordship of Jesus in our lives! What He says (His Word), we are to do! Simple enough right? Yet this is the very thing that we struggle with, just as in a game of Simon Says, we can miss it if we aren't listening. So the focus this week is to stop in the busyness of our lives and spend time listening to God and then to see how this carries forward to everyday. The example that we use is the Discipleship triangle called Up-I
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stages of a Group: How to build group cohesion

The Stages of a Group: How to build group cohesion How many of us when we start to meet with a group of people, we experience either a great connection or a flop? Often, we begin to look at ourselves and wonder what if this was really what we were supposed to do. Don’t worry, don’t get stressed. What we have found is that groups experience a natural outworking of how much they desire to stick together. The term is called group cohesion, which is basically how sticky they are. Larry Osborne has a book called “Sticky Church” and the process that Osborne promotes the most as to how sticky a church will be is through their small groups. Osborne says, “Anytime a group of friends commit to gather together to share their lives, pray, and discuss the biblical text and life application…good stuff happens.” The gathering together is how a group becomes cohesive with one another. What is interesting though is that this just doesn’t automatically happen. There are times
Post a Comment
Read more

The Protectors: Power On- new book release

Hey everyone, Just wanted to share some details about my recent book release. Hope that you enjoy! New Book Release from C Joseph Brasher titled The Protectors: Power On, see how a preteen boy navigates AI technology and learns where true protection comes from #protectors #power #christianfiction via ripl.com The Protectors: Power On Paperback- $9.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1676304185/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_CxG-Db35GCJ5B Kindle- $4.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082VHH584/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_hHG-Db2SVGESM Follow my author page on Amazon for more information! https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B082XCDRL7
Post a Comment
Read more