- Cognitive | Intellectual Skills
- Affective | Values Attributes
- Psychomotor | Manual Skills
- Metacognitive | Personal Epistemology
My original circular representation of the interpersonal domain of educational ‘objectives’ is based on taxonomies articulated by Jeanette Atkinson (2014) and inferred from the work of Milton J. Bennett (1986) and considerable practice-based evidence. An explanation of why I have chosen to use the circular design and to use ‘active’ verbs is on the main taxonomy page.
See Courseware pages for High Resolution versions.
The vast majority of employers ask that new employees, notably graduates, be effective communicators; be able to work well within a team; take responsibility; and be accountable for their actions. Increasingly in a global context, new employees are also expected to be culturally ‘aware’ or ‘sensitive’. A great many universities go to significant effort to promote their ‘graduate attributes’ that usually include things like ‘global citizenship‘ and ‘being an effective member of society‘.
These abilities or attributes, communication, conflict resolution, collaboration, and cross-cultural communication, all fall within the educational taxonomy of educational objectives described as the interpersonal domain, with some overlap to the affective domain, as it denotes personal value structures. The affective certainly underpins the interpersonal. Yet it is rare to find any institution in which the interpersonal domain is adequately represented in its intended learning outcomes (ILOs) and includes a notion of progression throughout a programme.
There will be references to ‘being able to work together in a team‘ or ‘communicate effectively‘, but these are rarely articulated as assessable ILOs. Surely, given its importance as a personal attribute, interpersonal skills should be the central feature of at least some modules within any given programme of studies. We know students pay more attention to skills that are directly assessed, so rather than having catch-all communication-lite ILOs, we should directly address and assess these attributes. My scholarship has developed an interpersonal domain taxonomy that maps the four facets of interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, collaboration, and cross-cultural communication. Mapped within a single domain across five progressively complex levels of competence (articulate, argue, debate, translate, interpret), all four facets are represented.
As with all of my circular visual representations, the boundaries between segments are fluid and can be breached by designers as needed. There may be reasons for articulating a ‘lower-level’ ILO for conflict resolution within an ‘articulate’ range, whilst at the same time having an ILO addressing cross-cultural awareness from the highest ‘interpret’ segment in the same module. This visual representation is intended simply to prompt discussions within learning design teams about the appropriate language for structural ILOs and their associated assessments.
References
Atkinson, J. C. (2014). Education, Values and Ethics in International Heritage: Learning to Respect. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Group.
Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10(2), 179–196.
Bennett, M., J. (1993). Towards ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In M. Paige (Ed.), Education for the Intercultural Experience. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.
Hammer, M. R., Bennett, M. J., & Wiseman, R. (2003). Measuring intercultural sensitivity: The intercultural development inventory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27(4), 421–443.