The Creation & Formulation of Bloom’s Theory

Benjamin Bloom’s biggest contribution to the field of education was his theory which was later published as a taxonomy of objectives. Blooms’ Taxonomy is a hierarchical model that states learning and assessment methods on multiple cognitive levels for k-12 teachers and college professors. The theory was published by Benjamin Bloom, Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl in 1965 and titled “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives”. It is now most famously referred to as “Bloom’s Taxonomy”. The purpose of this theory is to encourage higher level thinking in students by working their way up. The taxonomy also stands as a way to determine the learning outcomes/objectives and the level of development that comes from this by using action verbs to state what the student needs to be capable of doing after the lesson is taught. The theory is used for teachers to “plan and deliver appropriate instruction, design valid assessment tasks and strategies, and to ensure that instruction and assessment are aligned with the objectives”. This taxonomy was originally made up of six levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. These levels help to establish a purpose for the lesson and clarify the overall objectives for both the teachers and students and were based upon the claim that knowledge was the prerequisite for these skill and abilities to be achieved. However, in 2001, a group of cognitive psychologists revised this taxonomy. The revised taxonomy uses verbs rather than nouns to describe the classification. These include: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. This updated version also focuses on knowledge as the basis of the six cognitive processes but makes a taxonomy for the different types. These include: Factual knowledge, Conceptual knowledge, Procedural knowledge, and Metacognitive knowledge.