MARIA EVA S.

NACION
DR BENJAMIN BLOOM
Bloom's Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational
psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in
education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures,
and principles , rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often
used when designing educational training, and learning processes.
The Three Domains of Learning
The committee identified three domains of educational activities or learning:
Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)
Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)
Domains may be thought of as categories. Instructional designers, trainers,
and
educators
often
refer
to
these
three
categories
as
KSA
(Knowledge [cognitive], Skills [psychomotor],
and Attitudes [affective]).
This
taxonomy of learning behaviors may be thought of as the goals of the
learning process. That is, after a learning episode, the learner should have
acquired a new skill, knowledge, and/or attitude.
The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills
(Bloom, 1956). This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural
patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and skills.
There are six major categories of cognitive an processes, starting from the simplest to
the most complex:
Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation
The categories can be thought of as degrees of diffi culties. That is, the first
ones must normally be mastered before the next one can take place.
Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the
cognitive domain in the mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the
three most prominent ones being (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank,
Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, Wittrock, 2000):
o changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms
o rearranging them as shown in the chart below
o creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix

Implications
Blooms taxonomy serves as the backbone of many teaching philosophies, in
particular those that lean more towards skills rather than content. These educators
would view content as a vessel for teaching skills. The emphasis on higher-order thinking
inherent in such philosophies is based on the top levels of the taxonomy including
analysis, evaluation, synthesis and creation. Blooms taxonomy can be used as a
teaching tool to help balance assessment and evaluative questions in class, assignments
and texts to ensure all orders of thinking are exercised in students learning.
Connections across Disciplines
The skill development that takes place at these higher orders of thinking interacts
well with a developing global focus on multiple literacies and modalities in learning and
the emerging field of integrated disciplines. The ability to interface with and create media
would draw upon skills from multiple levels of the taxonomy including analysis,
application and creation. Bloom's taxonomy (and the revised taxonomy) continues to be
a source of inspiration for educational philosophy and for developing new teaching
strategies.
Blooms Taxonomy in the Classroom
Blooms Taxonomy can be used across grade levels and content areas. By using
Blooms Taxonomy in the classroom, teachers can assess students on multiple learning
outcomes that are aligned to local, state, and national standards and objectives. Within
each level of the taxonomy, there are various tasks that move students through the
thought process. This interactive activity demonstrates how all levels of Blooms
Taxonomy can be achieved with one image.
In order for teachers to develop lesson plans that integrate Blooms Taxonomy, they
write their lessons in the language that focuses on each level. The United States
Geological Survey provides a list of verbs for each level of Blooms Taxonomy for

teachers to use when developing lesson plans. (Although the list is designed for
environmental science teachers, the examples will work for any discipline.)

Remember that the trick in effectively planning lessons there has to be the
intention for growth specifically in the selected domain area! Learning takes place in ALL
3 domains and wise teachers combine domains so that lessons and learning are more
holistic and multidimensional.
Below is the old and new version of the cognitive domain indicating the hierarchy
or levels of thinking from the low order thinking to the high order thinking skills. The new
version only stated that in learning, we do not have to stop from evaluating but we need
to innovate, modify and produce as an outcome of learning.

Instructional Design
The figure showing the important contribution of Blooms Taxonomy is
shown below:
DOMAINS

AFFECTIVE

COGNITIVE

PSYCHOMOTOR

LOW ORDER AND HIGH ORDER THINKING SKILLSS

TEACHING- LEARNING
LESSON PLANNING

ASSESSMENT

The Blooms Taxonomy is very useful in making the Table of Specification which
leads to the developmentt and construction of the test items particularly the summative
test both the paper and pencil test, the performance test and authentic assessment. The
difficulty of the test questions are ranging from the easy to the most difficult questions,
requires student to be attentive, focus, concentrated in the test or in studying. It is also a
challenge to bright students and need to study harder to average or below average so
they can pass the examination.
The cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of BloomsTaxonomy are
valuable in the making the lesson plans. Students must be taught holistically if the plans
direct the teacher to teach the lessons using the three domains. The instructional
objectives of preparing lesson plans must be considered in selecting learning activities,
teaching strategy and assessment and even the assignment. In teaching the teacher
must not only focus on the cognitive aspect but must balance in which their feelings,
emotions, interests are also considered. Learning becomes concrete if the lessons are
presented in actual such as hands-on, experimentation and actual observation.
The Blooms Taxonomy helps us teachers to have a flow of teaching from the
simplest to the complex style of questioning. Like Piaget, learning is becoming complex
and abstract as you go older, Blooms also believe that difficulty of learning starts from
the simplest to the most difficult ones.
The old version of Blooms Taxonomy ends by evaluating the learning outcome by
determining the valu or worth learned but in the new version, learning must be put into
something useful, innovative and meaningful and with practical function.