Review of article on Bloom's Taxonomy

After reading "Bloom's Taxonomy: Original and Revised," I feel more enlightented and have a better understanding of thinking and learning. The article addresses the question, "where do we begin seeking to improve human thinking?" One website responds with "One place to begin is in defining the nature of thinking. Before we can make it better, we need to know more of what it is." In fact, learning, teaching, identifying educational goals, and thinking are all complicated concepts interwoven in an intricate web.

The basis of this article is Benjamin S. Bloom's Taxonomy and it's revision by one of his former students, Lori Anderson.

Benjamin Bloom made the inprovement of student learning the central focus of his life's work. In 1948, Bloom led a group of educators in the task of classifying educational goals and objectives. This group's main purpose was to develop a method of classification for thinking behaviors believed to be an important part in the process of learning. The result was the taxonomy.

Bloom's taxonomy consists of three domains: the cognitive-knowledge based domain, the affective-attitudinal based domain and the psychomotor-skills based domain.

The word "taxonomy" confused me in the beginning but later in the article it is explained as being synonymous with "classification." Bloom's taxonomy is a multi-tiered model of classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity. Teachers have used the levels as ways of encouraging their students to climb to a higher level of thought. In Bloom's taxonomy, the lowest three levels are: analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Each level of the taxonomy is subsumed by the higher levels. A student functioning at the "application" level has already acconplished the material at the "knowledge" and "comprehension" level. In my opinion, it is sort of like building blocks, using what you already have learned to move on to a higher level and more complicated material.

In the 1990's, one of Bloom's former students, Lori Anderson revised the taxonomy to fit the 21st century. She wanted it to relate to today's students and teachers. The changes she and the team made came in three categories: terminology, structure and emphasis. Anderson and her team changed Bloom's six major categories from noun to verb form. Knowledge was renamed remembering, comprehension was renamed understanding and synthesis was renamed creating. Bloom's original was a one-dimensional form, the revised taxonomy takes the form of a two-dimensional table. One dimension is the Knowledge dimension and the second is the Cognitive Process dimension. The change in emphasis is placed upon its use as a more authentic tool for curriculum planning, instructional delivery and assessment.

Bloom's taxonomy is used by teachers to measure their students' ability accurately. The taxonomy has been applied to a variety of situations, but the educational setting (K-graduate) remains the most often used application.