2. Capacitaţi intelectuale and British Cultural Studies

The categorisation of the cognitive skills or capacitati intelectuale is variable. The Plan cadrul lists capacitatea de analiză, sinteză, comparaţie, resolvare de probleme – aplicare a cunoştinţelor şi a competeţelor dobândite în situaţii noi, etc.

The categorisation we are familiar with derives from the work of the psychologist Bloom in the 1950s but which still forms the basis of the British National Curriculum. It is in fact very similar to that of the Comisia Naţională. Bloom lists six cognitive skills, starting with one skill he calls “knowledge”, and which the Comisia Naţională divides into two and calls the capacitaţi inteletuale inferioare (memorizare, reproducere). Here are Bloom’s categories together with some definitions and explanations

1) knowledge – recalling learnt material
2) comprehension – tested by translation, explaining summarising, predicting effects
3) application – e.g. of rules, laws, methods theories
4) analysis – breaking down to parts to understand organisation
5) synthesis – e.g. research proposal, speech, scheme for classification
6) evaluation – based on internal (organisational) or external (relevant to purpose) criteria

To see how these work in practice in Crossing Cultures let us take as an example class B.4, Creating Youth (pages 58-60 in the student’s book).
The Orientation activity here is concerned with knowledge, and asks students what they already know about the field and sets limits to the area to be studied (in this case youth culture). Knowledge is of course the first cognitive skill for a good reason: without any knowledge none of the other skills can operate (above we mentioned how knowledge forms the base of the cognitive skill pyramid), and for that reason Orientation activities are often concerned with reminding students of what they know already. But already in the second question comprehension is introduced, and the third question (knowledge) is designed to sow the seeds for activity C of this class.
Activity B provides an example of the kind of temporary knowledge we described above. The focus here is initially on synthesis in the form of classification of various pieces of knowledge that students are given and which they need know only for this class. A later part of the activity is concerned to evaluate the classifications that students come up with, by comparing their different solutions to the problem. As often there is no one correct solution, but at the same time some are more correct than others! It would be difficult to categorise “There is more leisure time for young people” with “Style is the way certain products are seen to be used” for example. Both the synthesis and evaluation are instrumental to the aim that students come up with a hypothesis about why a certain social formation has arisen in a certain place (in this case, the social formation is youth culture and the place is Britain).
Activity C is a listening activity that provides yet more temporary knowledge. Listenings will be familiar from EFL, but the difference is that students do not listen simply to understand the surface meaning of the words, but here at least they use the recorded interviews as evidence to test (evaluate) the hypothesis they themselves formulated in the previous activity. Other classes use listenings in different ways.
Activity D is concerned with looking for relevant evidence to support arguments counter to activity B and continuing the conceptual orientation of Activity C (comprehension and evaluation). It is a freer activity than the previous ones: students should by now know what to look for. A final plenary pits the hypotheses of activity B against the hypothesis of activity D, in an attempt to counter the claim of Professor Bonheim that such comparison does not exist in Romania. It asks students to evaluate these two hypotheses and ends by asking students to apply the concepts to Romania and compare the situation in Britain and Romania.
Note that we do not attempt to make each class cover each skill to an equal degree. Such rigidity of structure (which was a feature of the piloted materials) easily leads to boredom and is anyway impossible in practical terms and even undesirable in theoretical. Instead, we have tried to give a variety of activity and class types in this book as a whole that emphasise all the “higher intellectual capacities”.

3. Evaluarea formativa, evaluarea de proces, evaluarea capacitaţilor intelectuale – and British Cultural Studies
   Using the above skills as criteria we propose here a formative skills syllabus for BCS that concentrates on process rather than content. It is based on the British National Curriculum level descriptor for “exceptional performance” in History at level 3 published by the DFE 1995 – adapted to cultural studies in Romania . We think this is most appropriate to bilingual students, who are all – in theory at least –students that perform exceptionally well at school.
   To highlight how we have placed the skills into discursive formation, we have italicised them or given them in explanatory brackets.
4. Pupils use their extensive and detailed factual knowledge and comprehension of the culture of Britain and Romania drawn from the programme of study, to analyse relationships between a wide range of events, people, ideas and changes and between the features of the two societies .
5. Their explanations and analyses of, reasons for, and stated results of events and changes, are well substantiated and set in their wider cultural (and historical) context.
6. They analyse links between events and developments that take and took place in the two different countries (and in different periods).
7. They make balanced evaluations of differing interpretations of cultural events and developments in relation to their cultural context.
8. Drawing on their cultural knowledge and comprehension, they use sources of information critically, carry out enquiries about cultural topics and independently reach and sustain substantiated and balanced conclusions [ = evaluation, analysis, synthesis & application].
9. They select, organise and deploy a wide range of relevant information to produce consistently well structured narratives, descriptions or explanations, making appropriate use of terms and cultural references [= evaluation, knowledge, synthesis & application].

Obviously this set of paragraphs cannot easily be used to formulate assessments. We append a possible assessment chart at the back of these Teacher’s Notes which splits the above paragraph into more manageable chunks. It also suggests a way student performance can be compared one with the other through the use of a 5 point scale for each criterion. Whether 1 is taken for “not at all” and 5 for “very much” or vice versa will depends upon the conventions of the assessors of course! We decided on a 5 point rather than the 10 point scale because it is simply easier to use. It is easy to translate into a final 10 point scale, however by finding the percentage of the total mark out of the maximum total of the criteria used.
It is important to point out that not all of the chart will be applicable in all assessments, and we repeat that it is meant only as a suggestion of how a content-based subject like BCS may be evaluated. In no way is it to be regarded as “authoritative” or definitive but rather as a stimulus to the creation of ever more accurate and fair assessment procedures that are appropriate to the Romanian context.
We have designed and placed the chart on a separate page at the end of the Teacher’s Notes for ease of photocopying.
Four assessments, each deliberately of a radically different kind, are found at the end of each section of this book. They are not there to be used necessarily (though of course all materials are available to enable them to be used) but to act as examples of the kind of assessment possible besides the usual request for facts of the type “Write 250 words on family life in Britain”. Three of the assessments give students information (thus avoiding concentration on memorisation) and ask them to process it in a variety of ways. The final assessment, on the pictures of the Queen, asks students to find information out at home and use techniques that students have themselves “discovered” and categorised in a previous class. In this case you may like to add as a criterion their skill at research. More information on these assessments may be found at the relevant points in the Teacher’s Notes.