Life Sciences Department, Everett Community College, Everett, Washington, United States.
Division of Biological Sciences, University of Washington Bothell, Bothell, Washington, United States.
Adv Physiol Educ. 2024 Dec 1;48(4):799-807. doi: 10.1152/advan.00076.2024. Epub 2024 Aug 15.
The field of anatomy is often seen by nonanatomists as concerned primarily with the tasks of locating, naming, and describing structures; these tasks, in turn, are often assumed to require only lower-order cognitive skills (LOCSs), i.e., the Knowledge or Comprehension levels of Bloom's taxonomy. Many nonanatomists may thus believe that studying anatomy does not develop transferable higher-order cognitive skills. Published lists of anatomy learning objectives (LOs) might reinforce this view by focusing attention on numerous details of specific structures and regions. To explore this issue further, we have analyzed the structure of published peer-reviewed LOs by characterizing their organization (single-tiered or multi-tiered), inclusion of function, use of action verbs, and dependence on or independence of context. Our results suggest that previously published LO lists, despite their value, may not fully showcase opportunities for students to develop higher-order skills. In the hope of stimulating further discussion and scholarship, we present here a two-tiered framework of human anatomy competencies, i.e., generalizable skills beyond straightforward recognition and memorization. This framework, which is intended to be both student-facing and faculty-facing, illustrates how anatomy courses may be reframed as opportunities to think critically and develop sophisticated, professionally relevant skills. Although skilled anatomists know that anatomy is much more than memorization, nonanatomists are often unsure how to emphasize general skills and problem-solving in their teaching of the subject. Here we show how a multi-tiered approach to defining and assessing learning objectives (LOs) can reframe anatomy courses as more than long lists of structures to remember.
解剖学领域通常被非解剖学家视为主要关注定位、命名和描述结构的任务；这些任务反过来又常常被认为只需要较低层次的认知技能（LOCS），即布鲁姆教学法的知识或理解水平。因此，许多非解剖学家可能认为学习解剖学不会培养可转移的高阶认知技能。已发表的解剖学学习目标（LO）清单可能会通过关注特定结构和区域的众多细节来强化这种观点。为了进一步探讨这个问题，我们通过描述其组织（单层或多层）、功能的包含、动词的使用以及对上下文的依赖或独立性，分析了已发表的同行评议 LO 的结构。我们的结果表明，尽管之前发表的 LO 清单具有价值，但它们可能没有充分展示学生发展高阶技能的机会。希望能激发进一步的讨论和学术研究，我们在这里提出了一个人体解剖学能力的两层框架，即超越简单识别和记忆的可推广技能。这个框架旨在面向学生和教师，说明解剖学课程如何可以重新定位为批判性思维和培养复杂、专业相关技能的机会。尽管熟练的解剖学家知道解剖学不仅仅是记忆，但非解剖学家往往不确定如何在教授该学科时强调通用技能和解决问题的能力。在这里，我们展示了如何通过定义和评估学习目标（LO）的多层次方法，将解剖学课程重新定位为不仅仅是需要记住的结构列表。
