Bloom's Taxonomy

In Battle of the Homework post I mentioned Bloom's New Taxonomy.  Knowing that may not mean anything to some people, I wanted to plot out some of the original thoughts behind this Critical Thinking Pedagogy.  Benjamin Bloom was the chair of a think tank committee in 1956.  They sought out to look at learning objectives and how to improve curricula.  The committee concluded that there were three domains to objectives set by the teachers.  These were Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor.  In common terms:  Cognitive - Knowing / Head; Affective - Feeling / Heart; and Psychomotor - Doing / Hands. When dealing with students, we want to touch on each domain in order to give the students a holistic view on education.  As each domain is important in its own right, usually the domain mostly focused on is the cognitive domain.  This domain deals with critical thinking and knowledge, which is also the first level.  Within the 6 Levels of Critical Thinking, the higher the level, the harder it is to actually teach, but richer are the rewards.

  Level - 1 Knowledge - Recall facts, terms and basic concepts. 

Key Words: show, tell, who, select, find, what, list, how, why, define, quote, where, describe, label, which.

  Level - 2 Comprehension -Understand information by organizing, comparing, interpreting, and describing. 

Key Words: compare, contrast, demonstrate, interpret, explain, extend, illustrate, infer, outline, relate, rephrase, give examples of, summarize, show, classify.

  Level - 3 Application - Apply knowledge, facts, techniques, and rules in new situations. 

Key Words: apply, build, relate, change, develop, solve, organize, predict, plan, produce. 

  Level - 4 Analysis - Break information into parts, looking for patterns.  Understand difference in facts and inference. 

Key Words: analyze, discover, list, simplify, categorize, infer, theme, survey, classify, divide, relate, take part in, compare, examine, function, explain, contrast, inspect, motive, distinguish.

 Level - 5 Synthesis - Combine given information in different ways to create new meaning.

Key Words: elaborate, formulate, prepare, suppose, theorize, create, imagine, predict, discuss, choose, design, invent, propose, modify, combine, develop, adapt, solve, change, compile, estimate, originate, solution, test, compose.

Level - 6 Evaluation -Make judgments about information and ideas based on a set of criteria, recognizing subjectivity. 

Key Words: appraise, determine, interpret, measure, prove, conclude, dispute, explain, compare, select, criticize, evaluate, support, assess, agree, decide, judge, convince, relate, prioritize, defend, justify, critique, recommend, opinion. 

 So what does this mean for CTK? 

 As teachers, we are striving to be ask Level 6 questions of the students.  As parents, you can help by doing the same. Getting students to think about what is important and why it is important and then be able to explain the rationale or problem to someone else will help aide in their Success.