Pedagogical Resource – Using Bloom’s Taxonomy

Source:

Bloom’s Taxonomyis a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for their students (learning objectives). The taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago. The terminology has been recently updated to include the following six levels of learning. These six levels can be used to structure the learning objectives, lessons and assessments of your course.

  1. Remembering:Retrieving, recognizing and recalling relevant knowledge from long‐termmemory.
  2. Understanding:Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages throughinterpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing andexplaining.
  3. Applying:Carrying out or using a procedure for executing or implementing.
  4. Analyzing:Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate toone another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing and attributing.
  5. Evaluating:Making judgements based on criteria and standards through checking andcritiquing.
  6. Creating:Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole;reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning orproducing.

 

Like other taxonomies, Bloom’s is hierarchical, meaning that learning at the higher levels is dependent on havingattained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels.You will see Bloom’s Taxonomy often displayed as a pyramid graphic to help demonstrate this hierarchy. We have updated this pyramid into a “cake-style” hierarchy to emphasize that each level is built on a foundation of the previous levels.

Bloom’s taxonomy

 

How Bloom’s Taxonomy can aid in course design

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a powerful toolto help develop learning objectives because itexplains the process of learning:

  • Before you canunderstanda concept, you mustremember;
  • Toapplya concept you mustfirstunderstand;
  • In order toevaluatea process, you must haveanalyzed;
  • Tocreatean accurate conclusion, you must have completed a thoroughevaluation.

 

 



Last Modified: May 28, 2019