BLOOMS TAXONOMY

BLOOM'S TAXONOMY

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour important in learning. Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest possible level...the recall of information.

Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order, which is classified as evaluation. Verb examples that represent intellectual activity on each level are listed here.

REMEMBERING

Recognise, list, describe, identify retrieve, name ….

Can the student RECALL information?

UNDERSTANDING

Interpret, exemplify, summarise, infer, paraphrase …..

Can the student EXPLAIN ideas or concepts?

APPLYING

Implement, carry out, use …

Can the student USE the new knowledge in another familiar situation?

ANALYSING

Compare, attribute, organise, deconstruct …

Can the student DIFFERENTIATE between constituent parts?

EVALUATING

Check, critique, judge hypothesise ...

Can the student JUSTIFY a decision or course of action?

CREATING

Design, construct, plan, produce ...

Can the student GENERATE new products, ideas or ways of viewing things ?

The Revised Taxonomy

APPLYING BLOOM'S TAXONOMY


BLOOM'S TAXONOMY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

During the 1990's a new group of cognitive psychologist, lead by Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom's), updated the taxonomy reflecting relevance to 21st century work. The graphic is a representation of the NEW verbage associated with the long familiar Bloom's Taxonomy. Note the change from Nouns to Verbs to describe the different levels of the taxonomy, indicating that these processes involve activity, especially active thought.

Note that the top two levels are essentially exchanged from the Old to the New version.
I think the reason for this revised format has to do with the way the pyramid is ordered in relation to complexity of processes. Creative thinking is held up as a 21stC ideal, whereas critical thinking=to evaluating is now consider a prerequisite for creative thinking. It is now considered that one can be critical ie. evaluate, without being creative, whereas most creative processes rely on a degree of critical reflection.

OLD Version



NEW Version




REVISED BLOOM'S TAXONOMY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

The revised taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001) incorporates both the kind of knowledge to be learned (knowledge dimension) and the process used to learn (cognitive process), allowing for the instructional designer to efficiently align objectives to assessment techniques. Both dimensions are illustrated in the following table that can be used to help write clear, focused objectives.

The more teachers learn about the way students learn, the more instructional techniques will improve by incorporating new findings into currently existing methods.

Categories in the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001):-
The following diagram illustrates the cognitive process dimension of the revised version of Bloom's taxonomy in the cognitive domain (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). It depicts the belief that remembering is a prerequisite for understanding and that understanding is a prerequisite for application. Perhaps the reason the three higher processes are depicted on the same level in this model is that they are considered more interactive and able to take place in a 21stC multitasking domain.