Bloom's Taxonomy
Bloom's Taxonomy is a framework developed by educational psychologist Benjamin S. Bloom and his colleagues in 1956, aimed at categorizing educational objectives based on the complexity of cognitive skills. The original taxonomy consists of six intellectual categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, arranged in a hierarchy where mastery of a higher level requires mastery of the previous one. This structure helps educators devise assessments and learning objectives, facilitating organized instruction and clear communication of expectations to students.
In 2001, a revised version was introduced, which shifted the focus to verbs, emphasizing what learners should be able to do to demonstrate mastery. The revised taxonomy consists of categories like remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create, along with a separate taxonomy for types of knowledge, including factual and conceptual knowledge. While Bloom's Taxonomy remains a widely used tool in education for planning and assessment, it has faced criticism for implying a linear learning process, being overly precise, and neglecting the social aspects of learning. Overall, the taxonomy provides a versatile framework that can be adapted across various educational contexts and subjects.
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Bloom's Taxonomy
In 1956 University of Chicago researcher Benjamin S. Bloom and colleagues published A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, in which they classified the intellectual skills of most concern to educators into categories representing increasing complexity. Bloom’s original purpose was to simplify the process of creating examinations: The taxonomy could be used to write questions addressing a particular intellectual skill, and a bank of questions measuring a particular skill could be assembled and drawn upon as necessary.
Bloom’s Taxonomy has proven extremely influential and is still taught in schools of education. However, a 2001 revision by a team of educators and researchers is now often used in place of Bloom’s original taxonomy. The primary categories of the revision are verbs expressing what the learning must to do demonstrate mastery; in addition, the revision includes a separate taxonomy of the four types of knowledge required for cognition.
Brief History
Bloom developed his taxonomy while working for the University Chicago’s Board of Examination. The purpose of the taxonomy was to simplify examination development by developing a framework based on learning objectives. Bloom conferred with a number of experts in the field while developing the taxonomy and was credited as editor for the 1956 book that first set down what is now known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals.
The original Bloom’s Taxonomy consists of six major intellectual categories, arranged in increasing order of complexity: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Bloom and colleagues assumed that mastering any level first required mastering the previous level. Thus, in order to comprehend a subject, an individual must first have knowledge of it; and in order to apply a subject, an individual must have both knowledge of and comprehension of it. Bloom and colleagues also developed a taxonomy of the affective domain, although it has proved less influential. The major categories of the affective taxonomy are receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization by a value or value complex; like Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, the affective categories are broken down into subcategories.
Bloom’s Taxonomy proved popular with educators at all levels and continues to be used for purposes such as planning and writing examinations and organizing lessons for a particular course. However, in 2001 a group of educators, researchers, and assessment specialists created a revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, edited by Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krautwohl, called A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; sometimes this version, rather than Bloom’s original, is taught. The revised taxonomy uses verbs rather than nouns for the major categories, describing what a learner should be able to do to demonstrate mastery. The main categories in the revised taxonomy are remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The revised version also includes a separate taxonomy of knowledge: factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. As with Bloom’s original taxonomy, the major categories in the revised taxonomy are broken down into subcategories.
Overview
Bloom’s Taxonomy has remained popular over the years because it provides educators and measurement specialists with an intuitive and easy to comprehend classification of the knowledge and intellectual tasks a student must master in the process of learning a subject. In addition, because it is written in general terms, Bloom’s Taxonomy may be easily adapted to any subject or level of education. The taxonomy simplifies the writing of learning objectives for a course, organizes day-to-day instruction, provides an outline for arranging assignments from simple to complex, and guides the process of writing examinations. Finally, it helps a teacher communicate to their students what is expected of them and how different learning objectives within a course relate to each other.
In the original taxonomy, Bloom and colleagues provided brief explanations for each major category. For instance, knowledge involves recall, whether of facts, methods, or structure, while analysis requires students to break down an object into parts and explain the relationships among them. Within each category, Bloom lists a number of subcategories, and some subcategories also have their own subcategories. For instance, one subcategory within knowledge is knowledge of specifics, which is further broken down into knowledge of terminology and of specific facts.
The major categories of the taxonomy’s 2001 revision are similar to the original, with the primary difference being that the revision expresses the categories in terms of activities to be performed by the learner. So, while the first category in the 1956 taxonomy is “knowledge,” in the 2001 revision it is “remember.” Similarly, “comprehension” in the 1956 version becomes “understand” in the 2001 revision, “application” becomes “apply,” and “analysis” becomes “analyze.” The last two categories differ between the two versions of the taxonomy: The 1956 version ends with “synthesis” and “evaluation,” while the revision has “evaluate” as the fifth category, followed by “create” as the sixth. As with the 1956 version, the 2001 revision includes subcategories; the category “remember” includes the subcategories recognizing and recalling while the category “create” includes generating, planning, and producing.
A more significant change in the revision is the creation of a separate taxonomy of four types of knowledge, also arranged in order of increasing complexity: factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. These categories are also divided into subcategories. For instance, conceptual knowledge includes the knowledge of classifications and categories; principles and generalization; and theories, models, and structures.
Although Bloom’s Taxonomy has been widely used in education, it has also been criticized on several grounds. One criticism is that it assumes that learning is a linear, ordered process, while modern educational theorists often conceptualize learning more as a web. Another criticism is that the taxonomy is overly precise and that the distinct categories make the process of learning seem more organized than it really is. A third criticism is that the taxonomy eliminates the social aspects of learning, focusing instead on a set of processes to be executed by an individual.
Bibliography
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UNC Charlotte Center for Teaching & Learning. “Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.” UNC Charlotte Center for Teaching & Learning. UNC Charlotte, 2013. Web. 15 July 2013.