Ped8 Week 9
Bloom’s Taxonomy
            Bloom’s taxonomy was developed to provide a common language for teachers to discuss
and exchange learning and assessment methods. Specific learning outcomes can be derived from
the taxonomy, though it is most commonly used to assess learning on a variety of cognitive
levels. The table below defines each cognitive level from higher- to lower-order thinking.
            The goal of an educator’s using Bloom’s taxonomy is to encourage higher-order thought
in their students by building up from lower-level cognitive skills. Behavioral and cognitive
learning outcomes are given to highlight how Bloom’s taxonomy can be incorporated into larger-
scale educational goals or
guidelines. The key phrases can be used (e.g., Example Assessments) to prompt for these skills
during the assessment process.
                                                       
Learning Outcomes
Learning outcomes are what you want your students to learn, either as a result of a specific
lesson or on the grander, more general scale of the entire course. Learning outcomes target
knowledge, skills, or attitudes for change. Bloom’s taxonomy specifically targets these by
seeking to increase knowledge (cognitive domain), develop skills (psychomotor domain), or
develop emotional aptitude or balance (affective domain). Learning outcomes might be identified
by someone outside the teacher, such as state-wide or departmental standards. The taxonomy
provides a basis for developing sub-goals and assessment methodology to meet these goals. It is
important to note that learning outcomes are goals, and are not the activities performed to
achieve those goals. Outcomes can be categorized into broad, global outcomes that may take
many years to achieve and provide direction for education, educational goals that guide
curriculum development over the weeks or months it takes to complete a specific course, and
instructional goals that narrowly focus on the daily activities, experiences, and exercises used in
a specific lesson plan.
 
Objective Builder Tool
For applications specific to a course, the Center for Distributed Learning has developed an
objective builder tool to help craft the language for measurable learning outcomes.
 
Applications of the Taxonomy
 
Taxonomies are developed to provide a framework for organizing a continuum along an
underlying structure. For example, languages may be classified as Romantic, Germanic, etc.
based on their underlying grammatical structure and origin. Bloom’s taxonomy primarily
provides instructors with a focus for developing their course learning outcomes. There are a
number of reasons why a teacher would want to use Bloom’s taxonomy. Initially, it can be used
to increase one’s understanding of the educational process. Teachers can see and understand
complex cognitive development and how lower-level skills build into higher-order thinking (e.g.,
recalling facts and comprehending previous problems allows a student to apply their experience
to similar problems). Using this understanding facilitates the prioritizing of material and can
steer the organization of lessons to maximize class time. For example, lower-level skills (e.g.,
memorizing factual knowledge) can be developed before higher-level skills are introduced (e.g.,
analysis of relationships). Current educators frequently face a confusing array of standards and
curriculum requirements. Bloom’s taxonomy offers a guiding framework for breaking these
criteria down into accessible chunks which can be used to direct day-to-day lesson plans and can
be easily compared to their own goals for the class. Just as different levels require different
instructional delivery methods, they also require different assessment methods. Bloom’s
taxonomy can be used as a checklist to ensure that all levels of a domain have been assessed and
align assessment methods with the appropriate lessons and methodologies. In this way, the
taxonomy also makes it easier for you to maintain consistency between assessment methods,
content, and instructional materials and identify weak areas.
 
Update to Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001)
 
Originally, Bloom’s taxonomy was one-dimensional with an exclusive focus on the knowledge
domain. The current updated version developed by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) reorganizes,
and highlights the interactions between, two dimensions: cognitive processes and knowledge
content. Anderson and Krathwohl identify two reasons for updating the original handbook. They
emphasize a refocusing of educational outcomes back to the original handbook, which was ahead
of its time and can still offer assistance to modern educators and to incorporate new findings in
psychology and education into the framework. In their revision, cognitive processes are
presented as verbs and the knowledge content are presented as nouns. Along with exchanging the
levels of Evaluation and Synthesis (which they rename to Creation), Anderson and Krathwohl
redefine the knowledge dimension to include four types:
●        Factual Knowledge: Basic elements of a discipline that a student must know and be able to
work with to solve problems including basic terminology and specific details and elements.
●        Conceptual Knowledge: Interrelationships between basic factual knowledge that
demonstrate how elements work together, for example, classifications and categories, principles
and generalizations, and theories, models, and structures.
●        Procedural Knowledge: How something is done including the methods of inquiry, skills,
algorithms, techniques, and methods needed to investigate, apply, or analyze information.
●        Metacognitive Knowledge: Awareness and knowledge of one’s own cognition including
strategies for learning, contextual and conditional knowledge about cognitive tasks, and self-
knowledge.
 
Bloom’s taxonomy is a taxonomy of learning behaviors, created in 1956 under the leadership of
educational psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom.
The original Bloom taxonomy described three domains of learning — cognitive, affective and
psychomotor. The cognitive domain was subdivided into the following mental skills —
Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. These skills need
to be acquired sequentially, i.e., you need to master Knowledge before going on to
Comprehension (understand) but they can overlap.
 
The revised Bloom taxonomy renames the original skills to verb form, flips the top two skills,
and further subdivides each skill along a knowledge dimension.
 
The new list of skills (verb forms) are as follows — Remembering, Understanding, Applying,
Analyzing, Evaluating and Creating. Notice that the last two have flipped, i.e., the new taxonomy
says that you must be able to critique some aspect of the skill before being able to use it to create
something new.
 
Further, each skill is now further subdivided along a knowledge dimension. The initial categories
were — Factual, Conceptual and Procedural. A new Metacognitive category was added later.
Thus the Cognitive Dimension in the revised Bloom taxonomy is represented as a matrix (skills
down the rows, knowledge categories across the columns) instead of a list.
 
What’s the Difference
 
 
Original Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
Terminology : Used nouns to describe the level Terminology: Uses verbs tp describe the levels
of thinking of thinking
Structure: One dimensional using Cognitive Structure : Two dimensional using the
Process Knowledge Dimension and how it interacts
with the Cognitive Process
Emphasis was originally for educators and Emphasis is placed upon its use as a more
psychologists. Bloom taxonomy was used by authentic tool for curriculum planning,
many other audiences. instructional delivery and assessment.
 
Six levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.
 
Familiarly known as Bloom's Taxonomy, this framework has been applied by generations of K-
12 teachers and college instructors in their teaching. The framework elaborated by Bloom and
his collaborators consisted of six major categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application,
Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.
 
Six levels of Bloom's taxonomy in order from lowest to highest
 
The six levels of bloom's taxonomy, in order (lowest to highest), are knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. All of these stages slot into
the cognitive domain, which relates to how the brain processes information and thoughts.
 
The 6 Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy
1. The first level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to Remember.
Example activities at the Remembering level: memorize a poem, recall state capitals, remember
math formulas
 
2. The second level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to Understand.
Example activities at the Understanding level: organize the animal kingdom based on a given
framework, illustrate the difference between a rectangle and square, summarize the plot of a
simple story
 
3. The third level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to Apply.
Example activities at the Application level: use a formula to solve a problem, select a design to
meet a purpose, reconstruct the passage of a new law through a given government/system
 
4. The fourth level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to Analyze.
Example activities at the Analysis level: identify the ‘parts of’ democracy, explain how the steps
of the scientific process work together, identify why a machine isn’t working
 
5. The fifth level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to Evaluate.
Example activities at the Evaluation level: make a judgment regarding an ethical dilemma,
interpret the significance of a given law of physics, illustrate the relative value of a technological
innovation in a specific setting—a tool that helps recover topsoil farming, for example.
 
6. The sixth and final level of Bloom’s taxonomy is to Create.
Example activities at the Creation level: design a new solution to an ‘old’ problem that
honors/acknowledges the previous failures, delete the least useful arguments in a persuasive
essay, write a poem based on a given theme and tone
 
Purpose of Bloom’s Taxonomy
 
⮚      Bloom's taxonomy was developed to provide a common language for teachers to discuss
and exchange learning and assessment methods. Specific learning outcomes can be derived from
the taxonomy, though it is most commonly used to assess learning on a variety of
cognitive levels.
 
⮚      The goal of an educator's using Bloom's taxonomy is to encourage higher-order thought in
their students by building up from lower-level cognitive skills. Behavioral and cognitive learning
outcomes are given to highlight how Bloom's taxonomy can be incorporated into larger-scale
educational goals or guidelines.
 
How Bloom’s Taxonomy Is Useful For Teachers 
 
⮚      In a separate post, we’re going to cover exactly how Bloom’s can be used by teachers.
There are many reasons for the popularity of Bloom’s Taxonomy (that likely deserve an article
of their own to explore). For now, it’s clear that many educators love Bloom’s because, among
other virtues, it gives them a way to think about their teaching—and the subsequent learning of
their students.
⮚      As mentioned above, the framework can be used to use to create assessments, evaluate the
complexity of assignments, increase the rigor of a lesson, simplify an activity to help personalize
learning, design a summative assessment, plan project-based learning, frame a group discussion,
and more. Because it simply provides an order for cognitive behaviors, it can be applied to
almost anything.
 
Using Bloom's Taxonomy for Effective Learning
 
The hierarchy of Bloom's Taxonomy is the widely accepted framework through which all
teachers should guide their students through the cognitive learning process. In other words,
teachers use this framework to focus on higher-order thinking skills.
You can think of Bloom's Taxonomy as a pyramid, with simple knowledge-based recall
questions at the base. Building up through this foundation, you can ask your students
increasingly challenging questions to test their comprehension of a given material.
 
Utility
By asking these critical thinking questions or higher-order questions, you are developing all
levels of thinking. Students will have improved attention to detail, as well as an increase in their
comprehension and problem-solving skills.