I was with a student on Tuesday who reminded me of that old phenomenom - when you learn a new word you suddenly see and hear it everywhere.

We’d just finished a TV Production masterclass by a wonderfully inspiring Producer called Jayne Brierley who I brought into a project I’m managing for a group of 14 year old Creative & Media Diploma students.

Emily’s word was ‘vox-pops’ which having freshly learned meant the popular voice, from Jayne, she saw again during break time in Heat magazine.

It happened to me too. I’ve started managing some action research projects with primary schools, taking on the role of part broker, part critical friend, part provocateur.

One of the teachers I’m working explained she wanted to use the Bloom’s Taxonomy model to explore children’s thinking skills and independence. I nodded for a while before working up courage to ask what she was talking about (because sometimes when you’re brought in as the external consultant people assume you know more than them, and look at you oddly when it turns out you just know differently, not more). Luckily my group of teachers are wonderful and sharing and not at all judgemental; she showed me some templates she had and so I learned about Blooms Taxonomies.

One week later I happened to read a friend’s blog, someone who is at the starting point of creating a new business which marries education and corporate social responsibility, over in Calgary.

As part of her work she’s taking a course which was linked to on her blog, so I clicked through and hey presto - there’s that Blooms Taxonomy stuff again.

As it turns out, on further exploration, I already knew about the Bloom’s Taxonomy model, I just didn’t know that was its name.

It happens to me fairly often that what I know from experience turns out to have a theory, theorists and framework already quietly backing up my own findings. There’s something in there about the balance of theory and practice - for another day…
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