Bloom’s Taxonomy: The 21st Century Version

So much have been written about Bloom’s taxonomy; one click in a search engine will flood your page with hundreds of articles all of which revolve around this taxonomy. Only few are those who have tried to customize it to fit in the 21st century educational paradigm. As a fan of Bloom’s pedagogy and being a classroom practitioner, I always look for new ways to improve my learning and teaching, and honestly speaking , if you are a teacher/ educator and still do not understand Bloom’s taxonomy then you are missing out on a great educational resource. The following article is a summary and a fruit of my long painstaking research in the field of Bloom’s taxonomy. Bloom’s taxonomy of learning as Wikipedia has put it is “ a classification of learning objectives within education proposed in 1956 by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom ”. 1 – The cognitive : The intellectual or knowledge based domain consisted of 6 levels . Let us now go through the different domains stated here.

Bloom's Taxonomy Project Part III - The Affective Domain The Affective Domain was defined later by the original Bloom's Taxonomy team in 1973 and focuses on the way we deal with things emotionally. These could be things such as feelings, values, motivations, appreciations towards things, and attitudes. The five levels appear to be not only for the student, but for the educator as well. If that was not the founders true intentions, that is the plan for The Bloom's Taxonomy Project. The philosophies developed through this process will hopefully influence the full spectrum of community college staff from faculty to advising to administration. Level 1 - Receiving Phenomena - This level is defined as one's awareness, willingness to hear, and their selected attention. As mentioned earlier, I do believe that instructors already do many of these things already their classroom in an effort to help students succeed.

Engaging Students Through Effective Questions Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers. - Josef Albers (1888-1976) My youngest son Robbie, aged 12, often asks thought-provoking questions. Every few days he surprises me with a topic that seems to come out of the blue. Responding appropriately and respectfully can be a real challenge for me. Here are some examples of questions he has posed recently: Who invented the alphabet? and many, many more, often beginning with “What would happen if …?” There are no easy answers to any of the above questions, and they are great conversation-starters. One of the reasons I am so intrigued by Robbie’s questions is that, somewhere along the way to adulthood, I began to forget how to ask wide-open questions. In what ways might questioning techniques improve student learning? Student Engagement Like many teachers, I have seen my students begin to doodle or show signs of boredom as I explained a point or waxed eloquent about the subject under discussion. Conclusion

Definitions of Bloom's Taxonomy Activities at Various Cognitive Levels of Learning (LoL) Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives is used to define how well a skill or competency is learned or mastered. A fuller description of Bloom’s taxonomy is given in the following pages but a brief summary of the activities associated with each level is given below. At Knowledge Level of Learning a student can define terms At Comprehension Level of Learning a student can work assigned problems and can example what they did At Application Level of Learning a student recognizes what methods to used and then used the methods to solve problems At Analysis Level of Learning a student can explain why the solution process works At Synthesis Level of Learning a student can combine the part of a process in new and useful ways At Evaluation Level of Learning a student can create a variety of ways to solve the problem and then, based on established criteria, select the solution method best suited for the problem. What do I do at this level?