Cognitive rigor: Blending the strengths of Bloom's taxonomy and Webb's depth of knowledge to enhance classroom-level processes

Abstract

To teach the rigorous skills and knowledge students need to succeed in future college entry courses and workforce training programs, education stakeholders have increasingly called for more rigorous curricula, instruction, and assessments. Identifying the critical attributes of rigor and measuring its appearance in curricular materials is therefore fundamental to progress in this area. By superposing two widely accepted models for describing rigor — Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Webb’s Depth-of Knowledge (DOK) model — this article defines cognitive rigor (CR) and introduces the CR matrix for analyzing instruction and enhancing teacher lesson planning. Two large-scale collections of student work samples analyzed using the CR matrix are presented, illustrating the preponderance of curricular items aligned to each cell in the matrix. Educators should use the cognitive rigor matrix to align the content in their curricular materials to the instructional techniques used in classroom delivery.