Blooms Taxonomy

In 1956 psychologist Benjamin Bloom led a team that classified levels of intellectual behavior. These levels ranged from knowledge (at the most basic level) through understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and, at the highest level, evaluation. Bloom found that 95% of test questions in schools were at the lowest level of intellect. His work is instrumental in efforts to promote higher-order thinking.

Although Bloom's categories capture different types of cognitive activity and thus are useful as a starting point for thinking about thinking, it has been problematized by more recent research in at least three ways:

1. The idea that thinking is sequential or hierarchical is problematic. Bloom suggests that knowledge precedes comprehension, which precedes application, and so on. However, subsequent research has indicated that this is not the case and that, in fact, learners can engage in mental activities at all levels of the scale (Ritchhart, Church & Morrison, 2011). This is particularly important to bear in mind when we have learners with particular challenges. It is not unusual, for example, for a teacher with a student who struggles with reading comprehension to assume that that student does not have the ability to engaging in evaluative thinking. This is simply not true.
2. The pyramid shape is also misleading, suggesting that there should be more knowledge level cognitive work than comprehension work, and so on. This has also been challenged by research
3. It turns out that "understanding" (which is sometimes used interchangeably with "comprehension," but this is a limited way of thinking about "understanding") may be the result of thinking about a concept from across all of the dimensions of thinking in Blooms Taxonomy. In other words, to understand something is to be able to analyze it, apply it, evaluate it etc. (see "thinking and understanding")

Contemporary educators tend to use Blooms Taxonomy as a shorthand checklist to be sure that they are requiring students to engage in learning across a range of depth and complexity, and it is useful for that purpose.

References & Sources:

Bloom et al.'s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible: How to promote engagement, understanding, and independence for all learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.