Cite this guide: Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/. Background Information | The Original Taxonomy |
The Revised Taxonomy | Why Use Bloom’s Taxonomy? | Further Information The above graphic is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You’re free to share, reproduce, or otherwise use it, as long as you attribute it to the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. For a higher resolution version, visit our Flickr account and look for the “Download this photo” icon. Background InformationIn 1956, Benjamin Bloom with collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl published a framework for categorizing educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. 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. The categories after Knowledge were presented as “skills and abilities,” with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice. While each category contained subcategories, all lying along a continuum from simple to complex and concrete to abstract, the taxonomy is popularly remembered according to the six main categories. The Original Taxonomy (1956)Here are the authors’ brief explanations of these main categories in from the appendix of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Handbook One, pp. 201-207):
The 1984 edition of Handbook One is available in the CFT Library in Calhoun 116. See its ACORN record for call number and availability. Barbara Gross Davis, in the “Asking Questions” chapter of Tools for Teaching, also provides examples of questions corresponding to the six categories. This chapter is not available in the online version of the book, but Tools for Teaching is available in the CFT Library. See its ACORN record for call number and availability. The Revised Taxonomy (2001)A group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists published in 2001 a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the title A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. This title draws attention away from the somewhat static notion of “educational objectives” (in Bloom’s original title) and points to a more dynamic conception of classification. The authors of the revised taxonomy underscore this dynamism, using verbs and gerunds to label their categories and subcategories (rather than the nouns of the original taxonomy). These “action words” describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge: Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
In the revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of these six cognitive processes, but its authors created a separate taxonomy of the types of knowledge used in cognition:
Mary Forehand from the University of Georgia provides a guide to the revised version giving a brief summary of the revised taxonomy and a helpful table of the six cognitive processes and four types of knowledge. Why Use Bloom’s Taxonomy?The authors of the revised taxonomy suggest a multi-layered answer to this question, to which the author of this teaching guide has added some clarifying points:
Citations are from A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Further InformationSection III of A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, entitled “The Taxonomy in Use,” provides over 150 pages of examples of applications of the taxonomy. Although these examples are from the K-12 setting, they are easily adaptable to the university setting. Section IV, “The Taxonomy in Perspective,” provides information about 19 alternative frameworks to Bloom’s Taxonomy, and discusses the relationship of these alternative frameworks to the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Why is it important for teachers to implement all six levels of Bloom's taxonomy in their lesson plans?Because Bloom's Taxonomy is based on a specific hierarchy of learning levels, each level is a vital part of learning to achieve deeper, more advanced cognitive skills and abilities. Building upon each level in your lesson plans will guide students to think in "increasingly more sophisticated ways," according to TES.
Why is Blooms taxonomy important to the students?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.
Why is it important to use Bloom's taxonomy and how does it apply to learning?Bloom's Taxonomy helps the teachers to understand the objectives of classroom teaching. It guides them to change the complexity of the questions and helps students to achieve higher levels of hierarchy. Further, it helps to develop critical thinking among teachers.
Why is it important for teachers to implement all six levels of Bloom's taxonomy in their lesson plans quizlet?Why is it important for teachers to implement all six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy in their lesson plans? The thinking skills are hierarchical, and students must master content at each level.
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