Three Categories of Content Standards

Marzano and Kendall (1996) identify three categories of content standards: procedural, declarative, and contextual:

• Procedural standards are based on "procedural knowledge, the skills and processes important to a given content area" (p. 12). Examples of procedural standards are: "performing long division, setting up an experiment, [and] editing an essay" (p. 12).
• Declarative standards are based on "declarative knowledge, [which] can be thought of as 'information' and usually involves component parts. For example, knowledge of the concept of 'democracy' includes understanding that decisions are made by the people, each person has a single vote, votes are weighted equally, and so on" (p. 12). Examples of declarative standards include: "understanding the concept of a numerator, knowing what an amoeba is, [and] knowing the conventions of punctuation" (p. 12).
• Contextual standards are based on contextual knowledge--"knowledge in context, information, and/or skills that have particular meaning because of the conditions that form part of their description" (p. 12). Examples of contextual knowledge include: "modeling numbers using number line, classifying organisms, [and] using appropriate tone and style for a selected audience" (p. 12). They add:

"Like the declarative/procedural distinction, this contextual knowledge is basic; a 'piece' that cannot be further reduced without loss of important information. For example, modeling numbers using a number line involves a procedural part (the process of modeling) and a declarative part (the concept of numbers). However, the two combined are greater than the sum of the individual parts. The combination represents a basic unit of knowledge important to the domain of mathematics. The process of modeling in this context has specific characteristics that it does not have in other contexts, and the characteristics of numbers that are highlighted in the modeling process are probably not highlighted quite so specifically in any other environment." (p. 12)

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