Bloom's Taxonomy: Annotated Bibliography

1.1 An Explanation of each of the areas of learning and how these are interdependent.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, a classification of the main levels of learning, has six stages; the stages ranging from knowledge to evaluation. As one can infer, the two stages have many differences, being on opposite sides of the chart and the terms having completely different meanings. Knowledge, being the most basic of the learning stages, is made up of mostly previously learned information which we can easily bring up in our minds. We remember things such as dates, times, words, etc. and can recall them with ease for we have them memorized. Although it is considered the lowest level of learning, knowledge is a key in getting to the highest level of learning, evaluation.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives in education that was developed by a committee of educators in the late 1940s to early 1950s. It shows us that lower level knowledge must be mastered

Bloom’s taxonomy consists of 6 levels of thinking ranging from the lowest to the highest levels of thinking. The first 3 levels of thinking (remembering, understanding, and applying) involve lower level of thinking skills. The last 3 levels involve higher level thinking skills (analyzing, evaluating, and creating). To strengthen your critical thinking skills, you must master the lower level thinking tasks prior to moving onto higher level thinking tasks. To deepen your understanding and become a critical thinker, you can complete the tasks and the question stems associated with each level of thinking.

“What any person in the world can learn almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning” (Bloom, 2017). This belief was held by Dr. Bloom in 1956 when he and his team created Bloom’s Taxonomy. Since then educators have been utilizing these “goals of the learning process” (Clark, 2015) and making assumptions of its usage and implications. I too did have assumptions but have not thought about how I developed them or how they would affect my use of the taxonomy. When starting this reflection I held three assumptions true about Bloom’s Taxonomy. The first is if the educator uses Bloom’s Taxonomy for planning through assessment, then the student will develop higher order thinking skills. Secondly, a student can move on to a higher order thinking level only if they first mastered a lower order thinking level. Thirdly, if educations use different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in lessons students will retain more information. Interestingly, I uncovered two additional assumptions that I did not know I had. The first of which is that the focus on cognitive development of Bloom’s devalues importance of other domains. The other is that Bloom’s Taxonomy is used only by educators in K-12 and college. Here are some things I understand about this subject that informed or changed

Asking young learners’ specific questions to elicit a response that is open ended or a specific one, two or three-word phrase. Allowing students apply what they know and understand in a creative way for a teacher to gauge what information the student grasp to versus what they do not understand. These categories will allow the teacher to arrange and rearrange materials to best fit the need of the

Bloom’s Taxonomy was revised in 1990’s and it was published in 2001 to make it relevant for the 21st century students and teachers which include several seemingly minor yet actually significant changes (Forehand, 2005).

wielding a systematic approach to concepts, topics, and areas of life. It provides a clear

Bloom’s taxonomy can be used in the field of psychology to solve problems. Psychology focuses on the study of the mind and human behavior, using the taxonomy will serve as a tool for understanding cognition and thinking process. As a practitioner a common goal is to help others solve problems. The taxonomy will help me as a practitioner to analyze the problem with a client or student. The use of the taxonomy will help to promote new ideas and approaches through evaluation before making final decisions when helping clients. The taxonomy can help identify the needs of the client, ways to help the client, and what methods have and has not worked for the client as a practitioner in psychology. As a graduate learner in psychology, the taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy was developed in 1956 to establish a framework that organizes instructional objectives (Blooms 1956). This framework consists of six categories, including knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Traditional cognitive learning, in which the instructors focus on using tests to access the lower levels of the taxonomy, has been shown to be a less favorable teaching method (McCarthy and Anderson 2000). Conversely, research by Garavalia et al. (1999) indicated that knowledge is better retained when students handle the subject at the higher level of the taxonomy.

Students learn in different ways and usually take in information from all of their senses e.g. haptic, iconic and echoic. However, students have a preference to which way they prefer to learn (Gilakjani, 2012). For this assessment I have created a workshop for students consisting of a range of activities. These activities will aim to support the learning types when retaining new knowledge. This will hopefully demonstrate to the students how different learning types learn better by doing different things. These activities are based on the David Kolb’s (1984) theory that students learn in different ways based on their personality type, educational specialisation, and career choice. I have used mnemonics as an example to demonstrate the learning theory. I have chosen the topic of mnemonics because they can help to retain information better, which can also help students.

Bloom Taxonomy was established to meet the needs of students based on the learning outcome expectation or curriculum aims. It has been said, “Bloom taxonomy helps teachers to formulate lessons that practice and develop thinking skills over a wide range of cognitive complexity” (Hess, Jones, Carlock, & Walkup, 2009, p. 1). The six cognitive domains of bloom taxonomy helps teacher to develop lesson objectives, because it explains the process of learning. According to Shabatura (2013), “Before you can understand a concept, you must remember it. To apply a concept you must first understand it. In order to evaluate a process, you must analyze it. To create a conclusion, you must

The process of advancing through Bloom's taxonomy is also demonstrated in the first group work video (“Lesson 2 Group Work”), where I engage a group that was struggling with the handout questions and needed support. The

Locate and review information on Bloom’s taxonomy. Consider critical thinking questions you ask your supervisees. At what level of Bloom’s taxonomy, do you pose your questions? If your questions are at a low level of thinking, how can you change the questions you pose? Provide examples of your questions.

Taxonomy is the science of grouping organisms into multiple arrangements based on their characteristics. Carl Linnaeus is thought to be the father of taxonomy, however, unlike Aristotle, he was able to group organisms further starting with “Kingdoms”, which was then grouped again into