The shocking truth about the Depth of Knowledge wheel

The shocking truth about the Depth of Knowledge wheel: You’ve been using it wrong all along

If you are a teacher, you have probably seen Norman Webb’s Depth of Knowledge wheel, and maybe even have it printed out and taped to your wall (I did in my classroom). Well, I have news for you: Burn it! Read on to unravel the myths about the wheel.

Part I: A thought experiment

To explain why you should cast off this thinking wheel of oppression, I’d like to start with a quick thought experiment. Please answer the following:

What is your favorite movie of all time?

Super easy Level One (Recall) question, right? Wrong. To prove my point, I texted my incredibly brillant friend (IBF) and asked him the same question. After chastizing me for asking such a poorly formed question, it went something like this:

Me: I have a really important question for you: What is your all-time favorite movie? I’ll explain later. And I need to know ASAP.

IBF: Oh man…..That’s so hard.

IBF: I can’t even…

IBF: Umm…go with Kingdom of Heaven.

Several minutes pass

IBF: Or The Four Feathers.

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Now this is someone who gets paid to make difficult decisions for a living and is one of the smartest people I know. And yet, the struggle here is real. Why should a Level One Depth of Knowledge question be such a challenge? Let’s take a hypothetical look at how one might arrive at an answer to a question like this.

Part II: Mapping out a thought process

Good teachers accept that students will use a wide range of strategies and thought processes when it comes to solving problems. We may not be able to read minds, but by looking at your own thinking and asking your students about their's, you can learn a lot of useful information. Below, I have mapped out the hypothetical steps a person might take in order to answer the question about their favorite movie. 

1. Design a methodology as to how you will decide what your favorite movie is. For example, you might use questions such as:

• Did the movie radically change my life?
• Did it have the best acting I’ve ever seen?
• Did it have the best story?
• Did it bring to life a perspective I’ve never seen accurately portrayed?

After you’ve decided on what you are going to use as criteria to determine your favorite movie, you…

2. Recall all the movies you can think of that would be contenders for your favorite of all time.

Next, you might…

3. Categorize the movies in contention for your favorite. For example:

• These were my favorite movies as a child.
• These were my favorite movies in the last 10 years.
• These are my favorite movies that I still watch over and over again.

4. Revise your methodology (if necessary, based on your needs and observations) and compare your top movies to decide which one is really, really your one true favorite. It might look something like this:

• I have picked my favorite in each category, but to break my three-way tie between X, Y and Z, I will add the qualifier, “If I had only a limited amount of time left to live and could see only one more movie, it would be…” 

Although we run through these processes very quickly and often without conciously doing it, you can typically figure out how you arrived at certain answers. Interested in learning more about the brain science behind how we think? I highly recommend John Medina's book "The Brain Rules" and encourage you to take a peak here in my blog about how neuroscience can be useful in the classroom.

Part III: Taking a closer look at the verb

If you had a Depth of Knowledge wheel in front of you and someone asked you to quickly identify which level my question belongs in—“What is your favorite movie of all time?”—where would you put it?

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I’d take a look at the question, see the word “what” in it, tell myself that this is a recall question, and say it is Level One (Recall). Am I right? Not according to the steps in our hypothetical thought process above. Let’s take a look:

1. You designed a methodology/complex set of criteria based on your personal experiences and preferences as to how you will decide what your favorite movie is.

This is Level Four (Extended Thinking) right out of the gate, folks. We are talking frontal lobe executive functioning here.

2. You spent time recalling all the movies that would be contenders for your favorite movie of all time.

The word “recalling” gives it away; we’re talking Level One (Recall) for this part of the thought process.

3. You categorized your top movies to help you decide your favorite one.

In this step, you organized your favorite movies, a Level Two (Skill/Concept) task. Think this step is easy? No way. You are keeping a list of the zillions of movies you’ve seen and loved in your head at the same time you attempt to place them into categories to help make your decision process easier. Not to mention, as you are working this part out, no doubt other movies you forgot about are popping into your head as the categories you’ve chosen (favorite childhood movies, for example) prompt you to remember that you watched “The NeverEnding Story” on VHS until you literally wore it out.

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4. You revised your methodology and then compared your top movies.

After all your hard work, you realize that picking between “Kingdom of Heaven” and “The Four Feathers” is nearly impossible, and so you revise your initial methodology to add “If I only had a week to live…” I’d say this thought process lands us in Level Three (Strategic Thinking).

In the end, my question, which appeared to be a simple recall task, was actually challenging us to think on all four levels of the Depth of Knowledge wheel—including that rare unicorn, Level Four (Extended Thinking). Again, it’s NOT about the word “what” in the question but the depth of thinking required to answer it.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Educational design expert  Dr. Rosalind LaRocque of American Federation of Teachers and folks at ASCD will tell you the same thing: It's not about the verb, so don’t let the words box you (or your students’ learning) in. 

Part IV: Still not convinced?

Is your mind blown yet? Mine was when I realized that I'd been using the wheel wrong for almost a decade. Still not convinced? Let’s look at it another way. Have you ever noticed with verbs on the wheel can actually live in several different levels? Pick one yourself from the wheel or you can use the example below:

Take the word “describe,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “to represent or give an account of in words. Describe a picture. The police asked her to describe the thief.”

On the Depth of Knowledge wheel, it pops up at least two times: in Level One (Recall) and in Level Two (Skill/Concept). Where does it really belong? Depends on the context of the question, doesn’t it?

My point here, again, is that focusing on the verb doesn’t actually give us an accurate reflection or the whole picture. Further, it separates and puts a hierarchy on the types of thinking students are doing. The shocking truth is that since 1956, people have been using both Bloom’s Taxonomy wrong (Benjamin Bloom even said this himself) and Webb's Wheel incorrectly. The Depth of Knowledge wheel continues to send educators the wrong message about the purpose of examining the depth of thinking required for a task. This school year, do yourself a favor and free yourself from the tyranny of the wheel.

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