Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy to Coast Guard Talent Management

At an organizational level, the Coast Guard does not prepare its members to adapt and forecast the needs of a dynamic and complex future. Evaluating training programs, advancement criteria, and capabilities of senior leaders can reveal where the Coast Guard fails and succeeds in developing critical thinking skills. By identifying where programs lack critical thinking, the Coast Guard can more aptly develop strategies to foundationally implement them. 

Critical thinking involves problem solving, decision-making, metacognition, rationality, rational thinking, reasoning, knowledge, intelligence, and moral components, such as reflective thinking.¹ Employees with good critical thinking skills provide the advantage every organization strives to attain. The impacts of critical thinking skills are definable and quantifiable. Without a sustained inflow of new ideas, the organization will begin to inbreed worn-out concepts. 

A system through which many academic institutions around the world teach critical thinking skills is Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning.² Developed in 1957 and revised in 2000, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchy, measuring the level of an individual’s comprehension of a given subject material. By employing Bloom’s Taxonomy as a measure of effectiveness, an organization can attain the proper perspective required to prepare its members to meet the multifaceted demands that accompany the complex technologies and fast-paced change on the horizon.  

The six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, from lowest to highest, are:

1. Remember: Retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory
2. Understand: Construct meaning from instructional messages, such as written, oral, and graphic communications
3. Apply: Carry out or use procedures in a given situation
4. Analyze: Break material into small parts and determine how parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose
5. Evaluate: Make judgments based on criteria and standards
6. Create: Put elements together to form a functional whole or reorganize elements into new structures 

Applying the Taxonomy to Coast Guard Advancement Programs and Practices

Remember. Coast Guard members are required to memorize significant quantities of information, and much of it for good reason. For example, memorizing manual numbers for reference, limits in pyro temperatures, memo formatting, and recurrent training minimums can be quite useful.  However, the Coast Guard also requires its members to recall significant sums of data for which there is no practical application beyond scoring well on an advancement exam.    

Servicewide exams are memorization tests based on any manual referenced in the rating performance qualifications. Yet these credentials have proven a poor gauge of job performance and capabilities. Moreover, they are often an indicator of an individual who will underperform in a dynamic work environment, where critical thinking skills are most relevant.³ Considering that the servicewide exam is the most heavily weighted criteria used for enlisted advancement, evaluating memorization measures only the lowest factor in an individual’s ability to perform at the next pay grade.  

Understanding. The rating performance qualifications paired with the enlisted performance qualifications measures both understanding of subjects and the ability to apply that understanding. As it stands, a storekeeper “A” school graduate reporting to his or her first unit and a chief storekeeper (E-7) beginning a new assignment are both novices with the lowest amount of preparedness in their new positions. However, the organization would benefit if there were progressively higher standards of understanding for members advancing to higher ranks in which the consequence of success and failure is far more important.

Apply. At this level, a member is expected to implement knowledge of a concept to complete tasks, such as following maintenance procedure cards, complying with directions in a manual to inspect equipment, or putting into practice a skill learned in a syllabus. Coast Guard members should have a good understanding of the duties of those members one rank above and below theirs to ensure mission readiness in the event a member can no longer perform their duty. At an organizational level, this will broaden perspectives across ranks, enabling members to anticipate the needs of their subordinates and supervisors alike while also quickly closing experience gaps that arise during times of high-operational tempo.     

Analyze. At this level, an individual can discern multiple ideas and perspectives at once. Analyzing requires a member to understand the “big picture” and its relation to the smaller sections. For example, in a major engine overhaul, the lead mechanic is required to know the components of the engine and how they interact before disassembling it. In addition, the lead mechanic must know how to direct individuals to evaluate components for condition and return them to service.

Likewise, if the lead mechanic is purposeful in task management, members assisting the job will develop an increased level of engine overhaul comprehension. It is vitally important to mentor subordinates to higher levels of analytical thinking. An individual must have thoughts of a concept before they can implement it in a practical way. The mentor must bridge the gap between concept and reality, driving members toward greater capability and understanding of their contributions to Coast Guard missions.

Evaluate. This requires an individual possessing a highly developed knowledge of a subject matter to determine how competent a subordinate is at his or her level. However, contrary to Bloom’s Taxonomy, the Coast Guard enlisted employee review (EER) does not require the evaluating supervisor to have relevant working knowledge or skill. Instead, supervisors are required only to identify that the written standard was maintained during a prescribed period; as a result, their evaluations often do not properly identify critical thinking skills.

If the EER’s value in the final advancement multiple was significant enough, the EER could be the most advantageous tool in discerning how critical thinking skills were applied. Other advancement multiple factors, such as time in grade, time in service, and sea/surf time, are effective predictors of a member’s potential as a critical thinker. So, if supervisors use the EER to identify critical thinking skills, they can better identify experienced members most competent at applying these skills and advance those members to supervisory positions and encourage them to become mentors to junior members. 

Create. Finally, at Bloom’s highest level of comprehension, an individual uses system knowledge and skills to expand capability or apply the system in fundamentally new ways. As a supervisor sees talents in subordinates and cultivates that potential into functional skills, the supervisor is effectively working on the creative level. For example, an aviation survival technician (AST) develops a training syllabus specific to the assigned unit’s unique geography and climate. This adaptation uses an existing system in a unique way to increase the capabilities of the unit. To accomplish this, the AST must hold a high level of professional comprehension to devise hypothetical circumstances in which expanded skills would be required. In addition, modification to existing skills had to be made to accommodate for non-standard search-and-rescue scenarios. 

Opportunities for the Future

The Coast Guard enlisted advancement system is comprised of six factors that combine to make a final multiple: 

1. Servicewide exam: 80 points
2. Enlisted evaluation review: 50 points
3. Time in service: 20 points
4. Time in grade: 10 points
5. Medals and awards: 10 points
6. Sea/Surf time: 30 points

At the conclusion of each 150-question service-wide exam, the organization combines all the earned factor values into the final multiple and ranks the members from highest score to lowest. To fill vacancies, the Coast Guard selects members from the list, beginning with the highest score, to advance to the next pay grade.  

Including demonstrated critical thinking skills into advancement criteria will be paramount to future Coast Guard success. Fortunately, much of the framework that would ensure the progression of members with good critical thinking skills already exists within the advancement system. Factor values of each advancement criteria would just need to be adjusted in this way:

1. Reduce the value of the of the service-wide exam. This would ensure the lowest metric performance, memorization, is not weighted too high.     
2.  Reduce the value of award points and allow points banking. This would decrease the negative impact on members who lack the opportunity for recognition and, through banking, enable members to use points dutifully earned.
3. Increase the value of the EER. Critical thinking skills could be effectively captured in the existing competencies of quality of work, technical proficiency, initative, problem solving, and self-awareness and learning. 
4. Increase the value of time in grade and time in service. Because many of the desired traits of analytical problem solving are based in experience, adjusting these values, especially time in grade, will more properly advance individuals who have had opportunity to further develop qualities in their professions.  

These changes will create a more effective Coast Guard advancement vetting process that captures analytical and problem-solving qualities more predictably. Most important, it will move away from a system of vetting that primarily captures the lowest level of comprehension—simply remembering facts.