Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ECER , Bolzano, İtalya, 4 - 07 Eylül 2018, ss.1-3
Cognitive levels of
the Tasks in Turkish Children Magazine: A Content Analysis
Behiye Ubuz
Middle East Technical University
Aysun Ata-Aktürk
Kastamonu University
Mustafa Çetin
Akdeniz University
Children’s magazines published in a week’s, fifteen days or a month’s
time can be described as booklets including stories, activities, poems and
contents which serve for education and recreation of children (Wilkerson,
1967). At first glance, by means of their colorful and lively format,
children’s magazines catch children’s attention. Children improve their
knowledge base by means of numerous values, rhymes, puzzles, games, secret
coded messages, and poems taken part in children’s magazines, either independently or with the aid of an adult. All
of these properties make children’s magazines differ from other written sources
(Wilkerson, 1967). Children’s magazines have been examined in terms of negative
messages given by advertisements exist in children’s magazines (Baxter &
Perkins, 2012), representation of older characters (Almerico & Fillmer,
1988) and gender norms (Hata, 2014) or fictional and non-fictional contents
(Wilkerson, 1967). Although children undergo some cognitive processes through
engagement with the tasks in the magazines, no
such study was encountered investigating cognitive demands of the tasks in children’s
magazines.
This study aimed to analyze the cognitive levels
of the tasks taken part in a monthly children’s magazine published by TUBİTAK (The Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey) depending
on the taxonomy of Marzano and Kendall (2008) in terms of four levels of
the cognitive processes. The tasks (draw the picture of your star cluster, tell
what you are seeing in the picture, draw the way of getting the rabbit to the
home, etc.) consisted of this study’s unit of analysis. The investigation of cognitive level of the tasks
enables us to understand how and to what degree children are directed to think.
Methodology
A popular children’s magazine, Meraklı Minik, targeting 36-72 months children and published on a
monthly basis by TUBİTAK from 2007 to 2016 is the data source for this present
study. It is published since 2007 year and has 14.000 subscribers. And approximately
57.000 issues are sold monthly at newsstands. With the institutional
subscriptions this number reaches 75.000 (D. Akça, personal communication, May
11, 2016). Within each issue, pictures, short stories, informative texts,
interactive activities, and games in the areas of physics, mathematics,
biology, geography, art, history, daily life skills are included. Within these contexts,
some tasks are provided to children that require cognitive demands including
counting objects, matching pictures, finding solutions to a problem etc. Each task demanding some cognitive processes was
then examined using the first four levels of a new taxonomy provided by Marzano
and Kendall (2008) as a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy. These categories were
further subdivided into 16 sub-categories. 14 of these sub-categories were
selected on the bases of the categories provided in Marzano and Kendall (2008) framework
and 2 were the newly added ones by the researchers. Recognizing and executing
together was accepted as a sub category of retrieval as some tasks included
both of these sublevels together. For example, the task that requires the
children to identify some objects, animals, people etc. at first and then count
and order them was categorized under recognize and execute. Analyzing
differences besides analyzing errors was considered as a new sub category of
analysis. In this sub level, children are expected to identify differences
between two pictures, situations, objects etc. instead of identifying errors. Researchers
screened all magazines for tasks and analyzed these according to the framework
developed. Any discrepancies were discussed and resolved.
Conclusion
The
investigation of the percentages of 570 tasks falling under the levels and sub-levels
of cognitive processing reveals that half of the tasks fell into retrieval
level (51.7%). The second level of cognitive processing most appeared in tasks was
analysis level (28.6%). This level was followed by knowledge utilization (13.6%).
Lastly, the least level of cognitive processing appeared in tasks is
comprehension (6.2%). Related to the sub-levels the ones appeared more
frequently were: Executing under retrieval; matching under analysis; decision
making under knowledge utilization.
Findings
of this study also indicated that, in the current magazine, there were tasks
addressing two new sub-levels named as recognizing and executing under
retrieval and analyzing differences under analysis in addition to Marzano and
Kendall’s taxonomy.
References
Almerico, G.
M., & Filmer, T. (1988). Portrayal of older characters in children’s
magazines. Educational Gerontology,
14, 15–31.
Baxter, S., &
Perkins, A. (2012). The presence of violent messages in child-oriented magazine
advertising: Considerations for Australian advertising guidelines. Marketing
Bulletin, 23.
Hata, M. (2014). Preschool girls and the media: How magazines describe
and depict gender norms. International Journal of Early Childhood, 46(3),
373-389.
Marzano, R. J.,
& Kendall, J. S. (2008). Designing and assessing educational
objectives: Applying the new taxonomy. California: Corwin Press.
Wilkerson,
J. M. (1967). An analytical study of the
contents of selected children's magazines (Master’s dissertation). Atlanta
University, Atlanta, Georgia.