Education is one of the basic indicators of the prosperity of any social group. Connotations of the development process of any nation have historically focused on the improvement of standards of living people through activities leading to economic improvement. In this effort, education, in general, and science education, in particular, have attained high importance. Today we are seeing a lot of educators are making reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy. In 1956, Benjamin Bloom published a framework for categorizing educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, popularly known as Bloom’s taxonomy, this revolutionary framework has been incorporated by school and higher education educators in their teaching method.
Benjamin Bloom didn’t anticipate inventing this doctrine. When he started developing his taxonomy of educational objectives, his main aim was to locate a common language that educational measurement connoisseurs could use to share findings and exchange test items.
Bloom taxonomy emerged from a series of informal discussions with his friends started at the American Psychological Association in 1948. During that period veterans enrolled in college graduated with more than just lower-level factual knowledge. Educators started considering assessment. Bloom tried to share ideas and test evaluations. Bloom identified four principles that eventually led to the development of the taxonomy. Categories should:
• Be based on student behaviors
• Show logical relationships among the categories
• Sheds a light on the modern understanding of psychological processes
• Describe rather than impose value judgments
The highest three levels of learning according to Bloom was Analysing, synthesizing and evaluating & The lowest three levels were knowledge, comprehension, and application.
The new version of Bloom’s Taxonomy has been converted from noun to the verb forms. Originally, Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy was one dimensional but with the addition of products the Bloom’s taxonomy becomes a two dimensional one. The revised Bloom’s taxonomy places stressed upon its application as a tool for the curriculum planning, Instructional delivery, and assessment. The new taxonomy is the biggest asset and is a sign of profound thinking and is perhaps more accurate.
Today it has become part of the language of teaching. Educators mainly talk about“lower-level “questions. According to them the hierarchy which puts knowledge at the bottom especially knowledge-based questions, especially via recall and retrieval practice are not so productive in nature.
In other ways, you need to teach a lot of facts to instill and reinforce knowledge enough to store it I long-term memory. or you can try them at the beginning but is going to be fruitless. Knowledge followed by recall and retrieval practice is the prime precondition
It was initially set apart in three domains
• The Cognitive– knowledge-based domain
• The Psychomotor– skill based field which is also known as KSA (knowledge, skills, and attitude) or ASK (Attitude, skills, and Knowledge)
The cognitive domain includes knowledge and the development of intellectual skills (Bloom, 1956). This endorses the recall or recognition of specific facts, concepts, and procedural patterns that serve in the empowering of the intellectual abilities and skills. There are six major categories, which are stated below, initiating from the simplest behavior to the most complex.
According to the process one needs to master in the first one in order to go to the next one.
Knowledge
The knowledge level, which is slated at the lowest level of the hierarchy, is defined on the basis of retrieving previously studied material. It often includes key terms, repeating something seen or heard, listing steps in a process.
Comprehension
Comprehension serves the largest category of cognitive skills and abilities. The key proficiency that can be learned at this level is processing new information.
Application
At the application level, a learner should have reached a position to solve a new problem by applying information without having to be assisted. At this level, learner requires to interpret information, demonstrate mastery of a concept, or apply a skill learned.
Analysis
At the Analysis level, learners should have learned to recognize relationships among parts. At this level of the hierarchy, learners are requiring to learn to differentiate, contrasts and compare, criticize, or experiment.
Synthesis
At the synthesis level, learners yearn for creative behavior as learners produce newly constructed and, many times, unique products. At this level of the hierarchy, learners are requiring to create a plan, propose an innovation, design a product, or organize information.
Evaluation
At the evaluation level, learners learn to make judgments about value. At this level of hierarchy learners are required to measure, value, estimate, choose, or revise something, perhaps information, a product—or solve a problem.
The next sphere of learning is effective which speaks about growth in feeling and emotional area. They are in sync with affective is valuing, internalizing, responding and receiving phenomena.
And the third and final sphere of learning is psychomotor which refers to the physical skills, the categories adapt to psychomotor skills are adaptation, origin, perception to name a few.
Bloom Taxonomy in its various forms represents the process of learning. It has been classified in some case like the Three Story Intellect (Oliver Wendell Holmes and Art Costa), but it still essentially represents how we learn.
Prior understanding a concept, we need to remember it
Prior to applying the concept, we must understand it
Prior to analyzing it, we must be able to apply it
Prior to evaluating its impact, we must have analyzed it
Instructional object analyzing or learning objectives are statements which determines what learners will be able to achieve after completion of a unit of instruction. They help us to decide what learners should learn and how we will know whether they have learned that content. Whenever we write any content, at the outset, we write these objectives to guide the design of the instruction.
These objectives can be aligned with educational outcomes. Suppose that a University is planning to start a training programme to improve the creativity of their students. If the students meet only lower- level objectives, their skill is unlikely to innovate and improve. They might be able to learn a few things about creativity, but to do their job effectively, they must develop the higher order skills to plan and design any new thought.
The significance of Bloom’s Taxonomy lies in its verbs. The verbs associated with each cognitive level establish learners can do to demonstrate what they have learned. The secret of this level is to select verbs that correlate instructional goals with content and assessment. Suppose a university develops a program to improve facilitators skills. If the learning objectives are “List the steps in the methodical process” and “Define training,” the program has a fatal flaw: its objectives are limited to the knowledge level, but its aim includes mastery of higher-order skills that participants may not have learned or practiced. If the objective is limited to the knowledge level and participants must turn to higher-order skills to show mastery.
But there will always be a debate, some will say that you do not require all the stages for each and every task, some will argue about the necessity to reach the apex level for all activities. This should be left to the individual choice. Before we create anything, we must have remembered, understood, applied, analyzed & evaluated.
Implications
Educational implications of Bloom’s Taxonomy include the following:
- Bloom’s taxonomy provides a universally effective strategy for delivering all type of content to impart learning.
- The taxonomy assists teachers to make decisions about the classification of content.
- Bloom’s taxonomy also helps educators to map content tasks that students need to perform.
- Bloom’s taxonomy guides educators to instill higher levels of thinking process for critical thinking or creative thinking.
- By facilitating taxonomy, a teacher develops questions or projects that require the development of cognitive thinking and reflection from the knowledge level to the evaluation level.
- An educator or a syllabus designer designs a curriculum as well as classroom assignment using Bloom’s taxonomy to advance the learning process from recalling learning materials to a higher level of thinking.
- An educator motivates the class by assisting his lectures based on Bloom’s Taxonomy.
A Teacher’s Role
The role of teachers everywhere is to guide their students to not only learn basic information but also to them improve cognitive ability. In other words, educators want to help improve their students’ ability to think. They should never promote students to just memorize information. After all, memorizing something is not the same as thinking or understanding or creating any new thing. Helping students to improve their thinking skills isn’t easy, but educators can follow
Bloom’s Taxonomy to help us reach our goal. Teachers can follow Bloom’s taxonomy by asking questions and delivering assignments that directly correlate with specific learning objectives in each stage of the process, formulating the objectives clear to the student.
Bloom’s Taxonomy can benefit not only academia but also workplaces. From financial models to optimization, students should be nurtured and encouraged to create new ideas. Tonnes of group activities and team-work can promote the exchange of ideas and brainstorming.
Follow this model in the everyday task you undertake and let your hidden talent bloom!
