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                                             Week:3- Blooms' Taxonomy

                     

                                      *   Blooms Taxonomy:

     Blooms’Taxonomy is ‘a classification of learning objectives’ within education proposed in 1956 by a committee of education by Benjamin Bloom. It means of expressing qualitatively different kinds of thinking. Who also edited the first volume of  the standard text, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals. It refers to a classification of the different objectives that educators set for  students learning objectives.

 Blooms’ Taxonomy divides educational objectives into three “domains”:

            1)    Cognitive, 2) Affective, 3) Psychomotor.

Sometimes loosely described as knowing/head, feeling/heart and doing/heads.A goal of Blooms’ Taxonomy is to motivate educators to focus on all three domains, creating a more holistic form of education. ‘’Taxonomy ‘simply means “classification”, so the well known taxonomy of learning objectives is an attempt to classify forms and levels of learning. It identifies three “domains” of learning, each of which is organized as a series of level or pre-requisites. It is suggested that one can’t effectively- or ought not to try to- address higher levels until those below them have been covered. Thus in the Cognitive domain, training for technicians may cover knowledge, comprehension and application, but not concern itself with analysis and above, whereas  full professional training may be expected to include this and synthesis and evaluation as well.

·                         *  Cognitive:

The most used of the domains, refers to knowledge structures. It can be viewed as a sequence of progressive contextualization of the material. (Based on Bloom, 1956).

                                                       

       * Cognitive Domain

                                     

                                     
                            Evaluation ------------------------ Creating

                            Synthesis---------------------------Evaluating

                            Analysis-----------------------------Analyzing

                            Application-------------------------Applying

                            Comprehension----------------Understanding

                            Knowledge-----------------------Remembering

(Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001)                               (Revised taxonomy of the cognitive domain following 

(Significant modification)                                       Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001)

Skills in the cognitive domain revolve around knowledge, comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.

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                           *  Criticism of the Taxonomy:

               As Morshead pointed out on the publication of the second volume, the classification  wasn’t a properly constructed taxonomy, as it lacked a systematic rationale of construction. This was subsequent acknowledge in the discussion of the original taxonomy by Krathwohl in the revision of the taxonomy and the taxonomy reestablished on more systematic lines. It is generally considered that the taxonomy played in systematizing a field was more important than any perceived lack of rigor in its construction.

           Some critiques of Blooms Taxonomy admit the existence of these six categories, but question the existence of a sequential, hierarchical link. Also the revised edition of Blooms Taxonomy has moved Synthesis in higher order than Evaluation. Some consider the three lowest levels as hierarchically ordered, but the three higher levels as parallel. There say that it is sometimes better to move to Application before introducing concepts. This thinking would seem to relate to the method of Problem based learning.

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          *Revised Blooms Taxonomy:

(1)Creating

Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things

Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing.

(2) Evaluating

Justifying a decision or course of action

Checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging

(3) Analyzing

Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships

Comparing, organizing, deconstructing, interrogating, finding

(4) Applying

Using information in another familiar situation

Implementing, carrying out, using, executing

(5) Understanding

Explaining ideas or concepts

Interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining

(6) Remembering

Recalling information

Recognizing, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding   

  * Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:-

  At the present time it is sufficient to state that instructional objectives are concrete    statements of the goals toward which instruction is directed. They play an important  role in the process of learning and instruction.

  

When developing instructional objectives, providing instruction, and evaluating student performance, it is important to keep in mind that there are different levels or outcomes of learning. Distinguishing among different levels and outcomes of learning is important. If teachers are unaware of different levels of learning, they are likely to focus on one level to the detriment of others. For example, a teacher may teach a vast amount of factual information but never get around to teaching students to apply and synthesize this information. Or a teacher may teach higher level thinking skills without realizing that these skills require the prior learning of basic skills that must be integrated into these higher order skills.

          In addition, it is not unusual to see a teacher who wants her students to learn higher order thinking skills give examinations that require only lower level skills. Under such circumstances, the students are likely to put their efforts into the lower order skills. Skills at different levels must be taught (and tested) in different ways; and therefore it is important for teachers and other instructional designers to take into account the different levels and outcomes of instruction.

          Bloom's (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is the most renowned description of the levels of cognitive performance. The levels of the Taxonomy and examples of activities at each level are given in Table 3.3. The levels of this taxonomy are considered to be hierarchical. That is, learners must master lower level objectives first before they can build on them to reach higher level objectives.

·       * Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:-

1. Knowledge (Remembering previously learned material)

Educational Psychology: Give the definition of punishment.

Mathematics: State the formula for the area of a circle.

English / Language Arts: Recite a poem.

2. Comprehension (Grasping the meaning of material)

Educational Psychology: Paraphrase in your own words the definition of punishment; answer questions about the meaning of punishment.

Mathematics: Given the mathematical formula for the area of a circle, paraphrase it using your own words.

English / Language Arts: Explain what a poem means.

 3. Application (Using information in concrete situations)

Educational Psychology: Given an anecdote describing a teaching situation, identify examples of punishment.

Mathematics: Compute the area of actual circles.

English / Language Arts: Identify examples of metaphors in a poem.

4. Analysis (Breaking down material into parts)

Educational Psychology: Given an anecdote describing a teaching situation, identify the psychological strategies intentionally or accidentally employed.

Mathematics: Given a math word problem, determine the strategies that would be necessary to solve it.

English / Language Arts: Given a poem, identify the specific poetic strategies employed in it.

5. Synthesis (Putting parts together into a whole)

Educational Psychology: Apply the strategies learned in educational psychology in an organized manner to solve an educational problem.

Mathematics: Apply and integrate several different strategies to solve a mathematical problem.

English / Language Arts: Write an essay or a poem.

6. Evaluation (Judging the value of a product for a given purpose, using definite criteria)

Educational Psychology: Observe another teacher (or yourself) and determine the quality of the teaching performance in terms of the teacher's appropriate application of principles of educational psychology.

Mathematics: When you have finished solving a problem (or when a peer has done so) determine the degree to which that problem was solved as efficiently as possible.

English / Language Arts: Analyze your own or a peer's essay in terms of the principles of composition discussed during the semester.

      *Concusion:-        

Bloom's Taxonomy need not be applied exclusively after course goals have been defined. Indeed, Bloom's Taxonomy and the words associated with its different categories can help in the goals-defining process itself. Thus, Bloom's Taxonomy can be used in an iterative fashion to first state and then refine course goals. Bloom's Taxonomy can finally be used to identify which classroom assessment techniques are most appropriate for measuring these goals.