PrintBenjamin Bloom and his taxonomy
"Creativity follows mastery, so mastery of skills is the first priority for young talent." -Benjamin Bloom
Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) was a highly influential psychologist and educator. Bloom's Taxonomy is a foundation of modern education theory.
One way to foster critical thinking skills is to think about our own learning at a meta level. How do skills build upon one another? Benjamin Bloom developed a taxonomy that helps educators use shared vocabulary and/or verbs to align their teaching practices with outcomes and related assessments so that we can continually scaffold toward higher-order thinking.
For example, a very young child may think that the game of football is simply a mass of people jumping into a pile after an odd shaped ball. As they learn the subskills of catching and passing, they are demonstrating greater skill. Then later when a player has developed a playbook and can adapt to situations on the field, they are synthesizing their skills, while their coaches help them to evaluate their performance and up their skills for the next game. Where are you in your development with the material in this course? Where will you go next and what do you need to work on?
The video below provides some background about Bloom's taxonomy and its usefulness in an educational setting. Prior to viewing, reflect about a topic that you have considerable knowledge about and something that you have only a basic understanding or skill set with. Think about your own skill set within Bloom's taxonomy.
Video: Bloom's Taxonomy: Structuring the Learning Journey (4:47)
Bloom's Taxonomy is a toolbox that teachers or students can use to classify and organize learning objectives. Its most popular version is based on the cognitive domain and assumes that learning should be structured from easy to difficult in the following six steps: One – remember. Two – understand. Three – apply. Four – analyze. Five – evaluate. Six – create.
On the first level, we learn to remember. There is just rote memorization and recollection of facts without much understanding. For example, if we learn about lemons, we want to remember the name, shape, color, size and that they are sour. Once we memorize these essentially meaningless facts, we move to the second level of learning.
On level two, we learn to understand. We begin to decode information and learn that a lemon is yellow when it's ripe to eat and if we take a bite, that it's really super sour. We also understand that lemons love sunshine and that they contain lots of vitamin C, which is a great natural antioxidant that keeps us healthy. Now, as we really understand a lemon, we can work with it.
On the third level, we apply what we know. We've understood that while lemons are sour, they are also a great provider of vitamin C. To apply this knowledge in a meaningful way, we could boil a lemon into hot water and add some honey, then serve this hot lemon to our sick sister who's in need of treatment.
On the 4th level, we learn to analyze, this involves examining and breaking down information into components, determining how the parts relate to one another and finding evidence to support generalizations. We study the lemon flesh, examine the skin, and look at levels of vitamins. We conclude that we can eat everything inside, while the skin tastes bitter and contains traces of toxic pesticides, it ought not to be consumed.
Now, we are ready to evaluate. We analyze, critique and compare. To evaluate our lemon as a good source of vitamins, we compare it to other sources such as oranges and supplements. We look at the following properties: vitamin levels, affordability, taste and packaging waste. If we evaluate our thoughts critically and without bias, we learn where the lemons score high and where others score higher.
Now after we have learned, understood. Applied, analyzed and evaluated, we are ready to create. As we now really understand lemons, also in comparison to similar things, we can formulate a plan to create our own natural lemonade. It's now easy to come up with a cute shop design, a good name, and a good slogan: "natural, healthy, yummy".
Bloom's Taxonomy was first created in 1946 by American psychologist Benjamin Bloom. The revised version from 2001, as just presented, serves as the backbone of many teaching philosophies, in particular those that aim towards teaching specific skills. Each level usually comes with a clear learning objective that can be tested. Critics of the taxonomy often questioned the existence of a sequential hierarchical link between each level. What are your thoughts? Please share them in the comments below.
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