In the 1950’s, educational psychologist, Dr. Benjamin Bloom, led a team of researchers
and educators who developed a model for educational learning objectives. Their
goal was to create a taxonomy to help improve critical thinking in schools.
The end result was the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956.
More commonly referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy, this model breaks learning objectives down into
three domains. The first was cognitive domain, which focused on the acquisition of knowledge.
The second was the affective domain, which focused on emotions and attitudes and tends to tie into
student engagement. The final domain is psychomotor, which
focuses on actions and motor skills. The most prominent is the cognitive domain,
which is what many educators use when crafting objectives and learning targets,
constructing questions, and designing assessments.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is often represented as a hierarchy, though it was never explicitly
meant to treat lower levels as “less than” or higher levels as “better than.”
Instead, the bottom levels are foundational and build up progressively to higher levels.
Here is the original Bloom’s Taxonomy, which goes from knowledge
to comprehension to application to analysis to synthesis to evaluation.
More recently, scholars have updated Bloom’s Taxonomy
by taking knowledge out of the cognitive domain and making a new knowledge domain with
factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge.
They have also revised the cognitive domain.
Let’s take a look.
The first level is remember, which focuses on the recall or retrieval of information. Students might
be able to list the order for classifying organisms, define the symbols on a map,
recall how to shoot a free throw, or identify how to search for information online.
The second is understand, which focuses on comprehension rather than just
recall. Here students engage in organizing, translating, and generalizing information.
Students might summarize the key events in a novel, classify governmental systems given
case studies, clarify the steps in playing an instrument, or explain how they solved a problem.
Next is apply, where a student uses the prior knowledge in a new situation.
It might involve practicing a skill in a new context.
Or students might provide advice given a scenario, use a rhetoric technique in a
speech, apply a strategy to a new problem, or carry out a test in a science experiment.
The fourth level is analyze, where students examine and breakdown information.
Here, they might identify causes and effects in a historical event
or a scientific phenomenon, compare and contrast ideas or ideologies, make inferences,
look for trends in mathematical data, or find evidence to support generalizations.
The fifth level is evaluate, where students defend opinions, make judgments and assess information.
Students might rank inventions for their impact on history, draw conclusions from an experiment,
judge the validity of data, or assess the quality of a theater performance or a work of art.
The sixth and final level is create, where students generate something new
based on prior knowledge. It might be a new idea, a new solution, or a new system.
However, there are some criticisms of Bloom’s Taxonomy. First, it treats learning as sequential.
However, learning isn’t always linear. For example, a teacher might start with
an evaluation-based question to pique students’ interest or do a hands-on application activity.
A second criticism is with the use of a hierarchy. This implies specific levels that are dependent
on each other as building blocks. However, learning might be more of a sliding continuum.
Furthermore, Bloom’s Taxonomy relies on a clear distinction of
categories. However, mental processes are complex,
connective, and idiosyncratic making categories seem kind of arbitrary.
Finally, it’s outdated. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a product of its time – a Cold War USA. This was a
solid decade before the first humans landed on the moon. This is why some critics argue that a more
accurate model of mental processes should be built on our current understandings of neuroscience.
And yet, for all these criticisms, Bloom’s Taxonomy remains prevalent
at both the K-12 and higher education levels.
Perhaps Bloom’s Taxonomy is less of a learning theory and more of a framework,
albeit flawed, that reminds us to incorporate
critical thinking in the classroom and take learning to a higher level.