Bloom’s Taxonomy

Applying Blooms taxonomy

Within educational theory there are an untold number of models that explain different types of learning.  Yet in the mid 50s’s a psychologist named Benjamin Bloom and some colleagues realized that there was a need “for a theoretical framework that would allow educators to communicate and share testing-related information with one another.”[1] They wrote “The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain.” This was an attempt to write down and agree upon educational goals. Goals that would inform assessment and evaluation.

Prior to this time much of the vocabulary surrounding learning and understanding was rather nondescript.  If a student knew the answers on a test then they got them correct.  If they did not know the answers then the effort would be marked wrong.  What else was needed?  Bloom, et. al.  realized that knowing the vocabulary of a field is not the same as being an expert within it. Knowing the names of presidents may not imply comprehension of the role of a president.  So they made some distinctions and intentionally called into use the word “taxonomy.”

For the record, a taxonomy is simply a matrix or organizational structure that shows the relationship between objects.  Organisms would be in a graph to show their relationship one with another in development and broad similarity for instance.  Bloom and his colleagues set about to create a simple chart that would show the relationships of different types of knowing.  The reason this hierarchy is so important, is due in part to the fact that it uses simple language to describe something that upon hearing sounds intuitively correct.  It also is of great value because it is so widely recognized and used as the foundation for many discussions about knowing.[2]

A quick overview (and there are many, many of these summaries out there) shows that Bloom breaks his conception of understanding into six levels.  He necessarily defines these as sequential, as it is hard to participate in what are called “higher order thinking skills” unless you have previously mastered the “lower-order thinking skills.” Bloom, himself was reported to have said about his work, that “few books have been so widely quoted and so unread.”  His theory gained acceptance although not widely studied, and he felt often misappropriated.

The most popular part of a larger work and still more sophisticated study shared six categories that describe an evolution of thinking from basic understanding to sophisticated  considerations.  An illustration that I have heard between the first two levels of 1.) knowing and 2.) comprehending is that a bird can build a sophisticated nest that a biologist could not replicate.  A bird knows.  Yet a biologist comprehends.  He/she may possess an understanding of the function of the nest, not just how to put the sticks together.  Yet, in this illustration it is clear that sometimes knowing can be more important than comprehending, especially if you need to lay eggs.

This is true throughout the hierarchy.  Some sections may well not imply the others. Lower order thinking skills are often disparaged within the field and are receive a lack of respect as does all rote study as mindlessly parroting back responses.  However, this type of “knowing” is basic, yet critical.  Applications that include drill-and-practice, flashcards, or even workbooks are seen as less than valuable by many and appropriate only for entry-level learners. As practitioners of educational technology, it’s important that we are conscious of this sometimes unfair bias against acquiring facts. “Knowing.” Conversely, in Bloom’s schema, the foundation for all the rest are these lower-order thinking skills. These simple parts serve as the ongoing exposition that allows us to grasp the rest of the story.

J. D. Hirsch describes what he sees as a fundamental flaw in much of the educational culture in America, due in part to this dismissive attitude about rote learning.[3] He describes this act as collecting “intellectual capital.”  Without an enormous amount of simple facts it is impossible to be an expert or even conversant referencing any field.  Instead, American schools use phrases like “learning to learn.”  Somehow dismissing the hard work involved in memorizing, say, anatomy for a surgeon.  Memorization and rote learning are not flashy, neither did Bloom dismiss them out of hand. Further, this does not imply that lower order thinking skills always require higher order thinking skills to have value.  Going back to the illustration of the bird “knowing” how to build a nest, sometimes “knowing“ is enough.”

Likewise as one creates learning activities there are not always knowledge/comprehension steps as often students possess pre-existing knowledge and accordingly lessons may be aimed at advancing thought about concepts with which the students are already quite familiar. So not every lesson will have a sequence marching up all six tread, dutifully climbing from lower to higher thinking skills.

Here are the steps in the Taxonomy:

  1. Knowledge: (reframed by others as “remembering[4]“). This resides on an almost perceptual level.  Information comes in, and is stored, for later retrieval and consideration.  Children know the alphabet before they comprehend the function of symbol sets. Likewise America’s Pledge of Allegiance is committed to memory seldom do school children understand its nuance. Just as questions that might encourage cutting-and-pasting (figuratively or literally) rarely require true comprehension.

From the perspective of makers of learning resources, often it is important to verify that a student is approaching the material.  Knowledge questions in this circumstance might serve to verify that a student, looked at the material, or went to the site, or even bought the book.  This type of verification/assessment, while simple, should not be dismissed as unimportant.

  1. Comprehension or understanding refers to “the ability to grasp the meaning of material”.[5] I consider this “meaning making.” To use a counter example to make this point: a person with serious autism will see the same expressions and will hear the same language as a person without that condition.  However, an autistic person may not derive meaning from inflection, implication, and expression.  Taking these perceptions and adding inference is comprehension; coming to the initial “aha” moment. Identification, interpretation and reorganization of the information all describe comprehension.
  1. 3. Application is interacting with knowledge. In Bloom’s work this category is the least well defined.[6] One definition for application is “the ability to use the learned material in new and practical situations and this includes applying rules, methods, concepts, principles, and theories.”[7] If recognizing a hammer is knowing, and understanding is “getting” what it is used for, then application is hitting a nail with it. For educators the distinction can be seen as abstract knowledge vs. “useful” knowledge, or knowledge put to use. Simply put, this is thinking about something: interacting with information; applying methods; solving simple problems; projecting knowable consequences; making something. This is when students do something with the information they have. They noodle around with the new facts. To assess this level of thought it is not enough to ask students to repeat, but to show how they can play with the ideas. Make and Show.

As a distinction from the later steps, this “making” is not so much creating new ideas, as much as it is demonstrating competence with the material covered. In Bloom challenging and creating are in later categories. The distinction is fairly important to the model.

  1. Analysis is when the learner is adding his/her own perspective to the mix. Now, the distinctions Bloom draws are not a system like the digestive system where one step must precede the other. Nor are they mechanistic, where one’s internal computer always churns in the same sequence. The assumption that is offered is that in order to start conjuring our perspective of any point we must first hear it, store it and digest it. Once learners get to that point then they can begin to dissemble an idea and look at its parts for more sophisticated understanding. This is when the learner can take ideas apart and look at how they fit together in light of pre-existing understandings. In study this might include a close reading, where the reader does more than accept the words on the page, he/she considers why they were used and what they imply at a deeper level.
  1. Synthesis is when a learner has taken in a concept and has examined it and then adds his/her own insight to alter or change what was learned by adding and reorganizing and repurposing the information or concept or process. The steps might be as simple as the phrase, “I know what you think, and I have listened to what you have to say, now here is what I see.” The ideas become active and new when revisited by the learner and expressed after consideration. This is creation. A student has studied the work of others and he/she now writes, draws, produces something in response to or in keeping with … This “generation” is not only another step but many learning theorists see this as authenticating and claiming knowledge that will enhance retention. This process allows the learner to own the information.

The constructivist school of thought claims that learning is built by students taking what they know and pairing it with new information and then generating new structures of knowledge. One could argue that being conscious of this creative stage is an important distinction between merely being a consumer of knowledge and being a true practitioner.

  1. Evaluation can be seen in light of taking a step back and adjudicating any concept or method: Is the material accurate, effective, satisfying…  However, this way of envisioning higher order thinking skills as a food critic with pen in hand, may not be that helpful. Instead it may be more apropos to consider that we all form opinions along the way. An expert golfer will have judgments that are more sophisticated than the novice. Likewise an ornithologist of a passing bird, or a programmer about computers. We all have varying levels of expertise in a virtually infinite number of areas. The knowledge base we have supporting current opinions form judgments. These informed perspectives are what evaluation addresses. They are not an end state, not a verdict, but rather an appraisal of what one thinks so far.

Bloom’s handbook has provided some useful ways of looking at learning and teaching. It has been used so universally it has become shorthand of sorts for assessment strategies and will remain so for the foreseeable future, so it behooves educators and instructional designers to be fully conversant of these elements when they assess, but also when lessons are planned. Being intentional about higher order and lower order thinking skills is important when developing a curriculum as design needs to mirror assessments.[8]

Instructional design: applying the terms

There are many ways to label these steps and, as mentioned, not all of them are needed in every lesson or unit. However it is common in most instructional design models to start with learning objectives first: at the end of the lecture, the assignment, the unit, the course I want the student to know what? Further, how will I know that the learner knows? So without going too far off to describe effective instructional design, covering appropriate scope, structure and sequence, it is best that the types of learning are also considered and then addressed intentionally.

Ways of looking at intentionally including lower and higher order skills can vary in terminology use.

  1. Knowledge: In this lesson sequence there is some media shown at the start. This is the perceptive part of “knowing” as described. It is also important because this media can be interesting on many levels, while opening with a dry explanation may be less inviting.
  2. Comprehension: Then there is a section that explains the media so as to promote comprehension. This can be audible but in this case it is written.
  3. Application: In this step the learner is doing something with the knowledge that he/she acquired. This can be in response to questions that ask non-rote queries. This can be drawing simple conclusions about the material. But for our purposes the learner is interacting with the information assisting consideration and promoting retention.
  4. Analysis: Here the user is involved in some interaction or activity that asks her/him to weigh in at some level. Now that they have heard/seen/read the material what do they feel about it? The facts from the previous section are examined and paired with the learner’s pre-existing knowledge. The learner is prompted to turn it over in their mind.
  5. Synthesis:  Now the learner is asked to own the information at some level. Make or write or respond, or elaborate, or defend, or disagree… but here the learner can take and mix what they already have with what they have been offered, It should not feel formulaic, but it is good pedagogy to get the learner to act, interact and react. This is true in terms of learning theory and in terms of brain theory.
  6. Evaluation: This step is important as well as it follows current research about retention, in that guided reflection after the synapses have been going through the previous steps is a proven way to bolster the length and depth of the understanding. As stated previously evaluation is not a third –party endeavor. Evaluation is a point for the leaner to rethink, revisit, and reconsider the materials and his/her own stance. It should seem both natural and needed.

Pre-K Frame

See/hear: We start with a story.

Read: Then there is some reading or explanation of the story.

Touch: Then they have a chance to interact with the parts. In math this is called a manipulative. With a computer it can be any kind of a give and take to use the terms and move the pieces around.

Play: The distinction between touch and play is that in one the student is becoming familiar with the objects, the stuff; in the other the student is mixing them up, and making a mess. Play is not product intensive.

Make: Now the student does it. Moves it.  Builds a new one. Plants one. Shares it.

Store: After the process the student goes back over the steps and the product and claims, or even restarts the process.

Depending on the scenario these steps may take a few moments or may take quite some time. They are not fully formulaic but complement a pattern that is in keeping with current educational research. As possible student interest is considered.  We consistently try to provide students a scaffold or framework for knowing where they are going and why this story.  Students need to interact with or visit the material and engage it themselves consistently and deeply. Whether in groups or online students should interact with each other and the material itself as possible so that they may offer their insights and opinions as they begin to own the knowledge. This knowledge ownership may imply they agree with the ideas or reflect adversarial perspectives, making the material more personal, more authentic and consequently memorable.

Digital Blooms

[1] Seung-Youn Chyung and Donald Stepich, “Applying the Congruence Principle of Bloom’s Taxonomy to Designing Online Instruction.,” Quarterly Review of Distance Education 4, no. 3 (Fall2003 2003): 317-330.

[2] Jon Clauss and Kevin Geedey, “Knowledge surveys: Students ability to self-assess.,” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning 10, no. 2 (June 2010): 14-24.

[3] E.D. Hirsch Jr, The Schools We Need: And Why We Don’t Have Them, 1st ed. (Anchor, 1999).

[4] “Bloom’s Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, Andrew Churches,” http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670.

[5] Elena J. Murphy, “A Review of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning: Practical Uses for Prior Learning Assessment.,” Journal of Continuing Higher Education 55, no. 3 (Fall2007 2007): 64-66.

[6] Robert J. Marzano and John S. Kendall, The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, 2nd ed. (Corwin Press, 2006), 5.

[7] “A Review of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning: Pr…,” 65.

[8] Seung-Youn Chyung and Donald Stepich, “Applying the Congruence Principle of Bloom’s Taxonomy to Designing Online Instruction.,” Quarterly Review of Distance Education 4, no. 3 (Fall2003 2003): 317-330.