Introduction-of-Bloom's-Taxonomy布鲁姆的教育目标分类

Benjamin Bloom (1956) headed a group of educational psychologists develop a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour important in learning (i.e. Bloom’s taxonomy). This taxonomy was further developed by Lorin Anderson and his colleagues to a new version in 2001 (Bloom’s revised taxonomy). Till now Bloom’s taxonomy has been widely used in education. Specifically, educational objectives of Taxonomy have been adapted by educational administrators, teachers, teacher educators, curriculum coordinators, and assessment specialists across the board. Because of Bloom’s taxonomy, human’s learning behaviour is not abstract but concrete and can be precisely delineated according to different affective, psychomotor, or cognitive levels. However, the objectives on cognitive domain are most commonly applied in education, and will be the focus of this assignment.With two aims of researching, i.e. what Bloom’s t axonomy contributes to understanding of students’ learning behaviour and what implications Bl oom’s t axonomy casts on teaching and learning, this assignment is divided into three sections. In the first section, old and new versions of Bloom’s Taxonomy will be introduced accompanied by a comparison between the two. We then turn to describe how Taxonomy facilitates teaching and learning in curriculum design, classroom instructions, and assessments, drawing upon latest resources and examples from schools or educational institutes. In the third section, it will be pointed out that like every theory of learning and development Bloom’ taxonomy has weaknesses and limitations. It is just one method of describing and evaluating human’s learning activities, thereby it is suggested to be used along with other educational approaches and with awareness to avoid the side effect of its weaknesses and limitations.Bloom’s Original TaxonomyBloom’s Original Taxonomy comes from the efforts of a group of educational psychologists gathered by Benjamin S. Bloom, then Associate Director of the Board of Examinations of the University of Chicago, to reduce the labor of annually examination preparation by creating a framework to guide test items’ design that can be shared across American universities. This framework is a classification of educational objectives, i.e. what students are expected to behave as a result of learning. The practice of this framework then in 1956 came upon with the published Bloom’s Taxonomy.Bloom and his colleagues divided learning objectives into three psychological domains or areas: Cognitive domain, Affective domain, and Psychomotor domain, which sometimes are loosely described(or head), feeling (or heart) and doing (or hands) respectively. Specifically, skills in Cognitive domain involve knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking; skills in Affective domain deal with attitudes, emotion, and feelings; and skills in the psychomotor domain focus on manipulative, manual or physical behaviour. Each domain is divided into several categories from lower-order skills to higher-order skills (see below figure 1).Figure 1: Bloom's three psychological domainsCognitive skills Affective skills Psychomotor skillsHowever, Bloom is best known for the research in cognitive domain. In this domain, cognitive processes were classified into six categories, i.e. Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. They are arranged in a cumulative hierarchy, which means the mastery of simple thinking skills is required prior to the mastery of complex ones. Furthermore, each main category was broken into subcategories except Application.With its precise classification of educational objectives, Bloom’s taxonomy makes it possible for teaching content and process to be formulated. It also provides a convenient and objective measurement for learning behaviours, which is helpful in enhancing educational quality.After having been put into practice for 45 years, Bloom’s taxonomy, however, has re vealed weaknesses and limitations, thus in 2001, a new group of cognitive psychologists, educational researchers and testing specialists led by Bloom’s former student Lorin Anderson updated the taxonomy to a revised version. Bloom’s revised taxonomy drew on recent educational and psychological development in the 21st century and made it a more complete and practical educational method. Details will be given in the next section.Bloom’s r evised taxonomyThe revised taxonomy was developed in much the same manner as the original one. It retained the same number (i.e. six) of cognitive processes and kept some of the original knowledge subjects. However, 12 changes have been made in emphasis, structure and terminology, and some changes are significant and will be discussed below.Firstly, with respect to emphasis, the revised taxonomy aims to serve a wide range of teachers, not only higher education teachers, who are focus of the original taxonomy, but also those from elementary and secondary education, thus it added examples from fundamental education. Another important shift of emphasis was from serving examinations to the taxonomy in use, i.e. the original taxonomy focused on assessments by providing abundant examples of test items whereas the revised taxonomy gives many examples of how the taxonomy is used in curriculum design, instruction, assessment and the alignment of the three. In addition, comparing with the original taxonomy in which the six major categories were given far more attention than the subcategories, the revised version described the latter in detail. This indeed could help teachers understand the nature of the six major categories more clearly (Krathwohl, 2002).Second, in terms of terminology, at first, the six major categories were changed from nouns to verbs (see figure 2). Specifically, Knowledge and Comprehension were renamed to Remember and Understand, Synthesis was retitled to Create, whilst Application, Analysis and Evaluation were changed to their verb forms Apply, Analyse, and Evaluate. Then the subtypes of each category were all replaced by their gerunds, called as ‘cognitive processes’ (Anderson ed al., 2001, p64), to suit the way instructions are used by teachers, take Analyze for example, in the original version, it is Analysis consisting of Analysis of elements, Analysis of relationships and Analysis of organizational principles, while in the revised version it turned to be Analyze with subcategories Differentiating, Organizing and Attributing.Figure 2: A comparison between the Original Taxonomy and the Revised TaxonomyOriginal Taxonomy Revised TaxonomyThe third type and also the most significant changes are in structure.1) From one dimension to two dimensionsAs has been mentioned above, Bloom’s revised taxo nomy has integrated the latest research on education and psychology (e.g. Constructivism, Self-regulated learning, and Metacognition) in 21st Century, most of which emphasize learners’ role in development and assumed that learners themselves are actively involved in the processes of learning. As Anderson ed al. (2001, p 38) put it ‘‘passive views of taking learners as ‘passive recipients’ and ‘information recorders’had been shifted towards more cognitive and constructivist perspectives emphasizes what learners know (knowledge) and how they think (cognitive process)’’; therefore, in Bloom’s revised taxonomy, the categorization of objectives has been changed from one dimension to two-dimensions: Knowledge Dimension and Cognitive Dimension (see table 1).Table 1: The Two Dimensional Taxonomy TableThe Cognitive Process Dimension1.Remember2.Understand3.Apply4. Analyze5. Evaluate6. Create The KnowledgeDimensionA. FactualKnowledgeB. ConceptualKnowledgeC. Procedural2) Knowledge dimensionIn the original taxonomy, Knowledge actually possesses both noun and verb aspects, the noun aspect was shown in its 9 subcategories and the verb aspect was explained in its definition (i.e. recall or recognize), but in the structure of the original taxonomy, the Knowledge category displays only noun aspect, say, subcategories like Knowledge of specific facts, Knowledge of classifications and categories. However, the other five major categories all show verb-noun relationship, say, subcategories like Analysis of organizational principles, Production of a plan, or proposed set of operations. Moreover, in teaching reality, instructional objectives are usually formulated by two parts: some subject matter content and a description of the deed to that content (Amer, 2006). So the revised taxonomy rectified this situation by separating the noun role of Knowledge to a new dimension Knowledge Dimension. From table 1, it could also been seen that a ne w Knowledge category ‘Metacognitive knowledge’ has been added into the Knowledge dimension. As it has been mentioned above, the revised taxonomy had been influenced by recent educational development, this Metacognitive knowledge comes from Metacognition which is assumed to be ‘cognition about cognition’ (Flavell, 1985, p.104). One important assumption on Metacognition is that it consists of two components, the firs component is knowledge about what skills, strategies and resources are required to complete a task (Schunk, 2008), whereas the second involves processes on how and when to apply the former ‘cognitive knowledge’ to successfully complete a task (Pintrich, 2002), thus it could be inferred that Metacognitive knowledge correspond to the Knowledge Dimension and Cognitive Dimension of the taxonomy Table respectively.3) Cognitive DimensionWith respect to the structure of the Cognitive Dimension, the top two higher-order processes were interchanged, placing Create a higher level than Evaluate (see figure 2), supported by the statement of Anderson ed al., (2001, p.310) ‘induction (involved in creating)’ is a more complex process than the deduction. Deduction involves breaking a whole into subparts, evaluating them, and determining whether criteria are met. Induction, on the other hand, involves finding things that could fit together, judging theirappropriateness, and assembly them to best meet criteria.’Notably, because Bloom’s revised taxonomy emphasizes its use among educational practitioners, it accordingly attaches more importance on teacher usage than developing a strictly cumulative hierarchy, thus Bloom’s revised taxonomy permits overlap of these categories.Bloom’s Taxonomy in UseAs has been mentioned above, Taxonomy precisely and systematically classified educational objectives by knowledge and cognitive dimensions, thereby allowing any knowledge, skills or strategies able to fit into at least one cell, i.e. an intersection of the knowledge and cognitive process categories, in the Taxonomy Table. This then made it a meaningful reference for educational practitioners to understand and reflect on their own teaching objectives, and also a useful measurement for them to determine how well educational objectives, assessment and instructional activities fit together. In other words, Bloom’s taxonomy is a ‘common language about learning goals to facilitate communication across persons, subject matter, and grade levels’, claimed by Bloom (cited in Krathwohl, 2002).Specifically, teachers can use Bloom’s taxonomy to:1) Analyze curriculum, standards or syllabusEvery school has curriculum, standards or syllabus they chose or provided by others, usually education administration departments. Most of the educational goals specified in these documents are broad and general and the interpretation is not easy. In this sense, the Bloom’s taxonomy could be taken as a basis for teachers to make sense of educational goals.Take English Curriculum Standards for Chinese Primary Schools and Junior/Senior Middle Schools (abbreviated to ECS ) (EMC, 2011) for example, there are five types of objectives in ECS: Language Skills, Language Knowledge, Attitudes to Learning, Cultural Awareness, and Learning Strategies. It can be seen that each of these goals could be classified into one of Taxonomy’s three domains, i.e. Cultural Awareness and Attitudes to Learning could be placed in Affective domain while Language Skills, Language Knowledge, and Learning Strategies belong to Cognitive domain. With reference to the taxonomy’s descriptions on each psychological domain, teachers can understand these knowledge, skills or strategies in ECS better.Then we can use Bloom’s taxonomy to analyze the general learning goals in ESC. These goalscorrespond tothe definition of Global objectives given by Anderson ed. al. (2001, p15) as ‘complex, multifaceted outcomes that require substantial time and instruction to accomplish’. Take two general objectives for English students of grade five for example, students should be able to:●Use simple English greetings and exchange personal information and information about familyand friends●Write simple sentences with the aid of pictures or promptsIn the first objective, t he primary clues come from the verbs ‘use’ and ‘exchange’. ‘use’ c ould be easily fit into the cognitive processing Apply which has a subcategory Use, and ‘exchange’, it can be inferred to mean ‘apply English knowledge to communicate information in English’. T hen the nouns ‘greetings’, ‘personal information’, and ‘information about family’ fall in to Factual knowledge in the Knowledge dimension, as they belong to ‘knowledge of specific details and elements’which is the second subcategory of Factual Knowledge. So this objective could be placed in cell 3A (see table 2).In the second objective, the primary clue is the relationship between ‘sentences’ and ‘the aid of pictures or prompts’, they are two different forms providing the same information, so the noun aspect of this objective could be put in the category of Conceptual knowledge which involves ‘the interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together’. Then the verb ‘write’here is not to create a new product but means ‘apply ing the language knowledge learned from the class an d the information provided by the pictures or prompts to form simple sentences’, falls in to Apply in the Cognitive dimension. So this objective could be placed in cell 3B (see table 2).Table 2: The placement in the Taxonomy Table of the English Curriculum Standards for Chinese Primary Schools and Junior/Senior Middle Schools for Grade fiveThe Cognitive Process DimensionIn addition, it is noteworthy that, with using the taxonomy as a measurement, teachers are able to break Global objectives and Educational objectives into Instructional objectives, that is, the most specific objectives which ‘focus on teaching and testing on narrow, day-to-day slices of learning in fairly specific content area s’ (Anderson ed. al., 2001), for example:●The student is able to differentiate among four common punctuation marks.●The student learns to add two one-digit numbers.●The student is able to cite three causes of the Civil War.In terms of motivational perspectives, specification of learning objectives to a great degree motivate the students, because it provides a clear and reachable day-to-day direction to move upwards, which meets the esteem needs and self-actualization according to Maslow’s theory of human motivation. In addition, if there is no plan week by week, day by day, the teacher may risk being distracted away from teaching the right content of the subject and abilities (Slavin,2006).2) Design instructional activities or assessmentOn the basis of understanding the standards or syllabus, teachers then can use Bloom’s taxonomy to plan instructional activities or design assessments. Stated somewhat differently, Bloom’s Taxonomy processing categories could not only form ‘a framework for the formulation of the objectives themselves’, but also serve as means through which activities and assessment tasks could be formulated (Anderson ed al., 2001).Waters (2006) provided an interesting sequent of sample activities which well illustrated how instructional activities are planed with reference to different processing categories of Bloom’s taxonomy. These activities were intended for a class of 10–11 year-old low-intermediate learners studying English as a foreign Language, and the learning objective is to help students be able to make simple instructions of constructing simple paper (‘origami’) mod els with the use of the imperative, prepositions, and so on. See as the follows (note that this assignment has revised several of the original activities to fit them to the new taxonomy):In addition, according to different levels of cognitive processing, teachers can use different questions to adjust the cognitive level of activities in classroom assessments, see the following:1.Rememeber: ●Who?●What?●When?●Where? 4.Analyze: ●Why (what if)?●What was the purpose…?●Is it a fact that …?●Can we assume that…?2.Understand: ●What is meant by…?●Can you rephrase…?●Can you describe…?●What is the difference?●What is the main idea? 5.Create: ●How could we (you)…?●How can…?●I wonder how…?●Do you suppose that…?3. Apply: ●What would happeni f…?●Whom would youchoose?●If…, how can…?6.Evaluate: ●Which is better?●Would you agree that…?●Would it be better if…?●What is your opinion…?●Were we (you, they) rightto …?●What examples…?●How would you…?After instructional and learning activities, assessment is required to check how well the objectives have been achieved by students, as then alignment of teaching methods or instructions will be adjusted and learning strategies or efforts of students will also be rectified. Take one objective of writing skill for students of grade five in ECS for example, say ‘write simple greetings’, it could be inferred that this objective is expecting students to apply English greetings that have been taught to writing, so this objective in the Knowledge dimension falls to Factual knowledge while in the Cognitive dimension falls to Apply. Then the assessments tasks could be designed within the intersection of the two dimensions to test whether instructional and learning activities have achieved this objective. An example of sample assessment task is the following:●Look at these pictures of people meeting on different occasions. Then write a one-runconversation for each picture.3) Align objectives, activities, and assessmentsAs Bloom (1956) stated Bloom’s taxonom y can serve as a ‘means for determining the congruence of educational objectives, activities, and assessments in a unit, course, or curriculum’ (cited in Krathwohl, 2002). This is further supported by Anderson (2002, p.211) saying the revised Taxonomy forms a useful framework for estimating curriculum alignment, and unlike other current methods, it enables educational practitioners to ‘probe beneath the surface to determine how objectives, activities, and assessments are similar in terms of the demands they place on student learning.’Indeed, proper alignment could improve instructions (Raths, 2002), and when objectives and instructions are closely aligned with each other, students will need to spend less time learning these objectives (Carroll, 1963). Thus alignment has a positive impact on achievement (English and Steffy, 2001).Because in the revised taxonomy, the Knowledge dimension provides subcategories of knowledge which could be replaced by any subject matter whereas the Cognitive dimension is divided to six processing levels providing a number of verbs, educational objectives, instructions and assessments could all find a descriptor from the taxonomy table. Specifically, as to objectives which usually are prescribed in curriculum, syllabus, standards and daily teaching plans, the noun aspect and verb aspectin their statementscan be placed in a Knowledge category and a Cognitive category respectively. The same is true with instructions and activities, the descriptions of which also possess subject matter and what to be done to or with to follow the instructions or complete the activities. Similarly, every assessment task involves the testing of knowledge as well as the processes of handling the knowledge. Therefore, objectives, instructions and assessments all could be placed into an intersection in the taxonomy table, and then they can be compared to see how they are aligned. If they fall into one same cell, it indicates a high degree of alignment. On the contrary, if they fall into three separate cells, it means the objective, instructions and assessment don’instructions and assessment don’t fit together (Anderson, ed al., 2001). However, there are partial alignments when they belong to the same column but different rows, and vise versa. Take the Volcanoes Vignette of Anderson ed al.(2001) for example, after classifying the objectives, activities and assessments into the taxonomy table, several alignment problems are evident. The first problem is all the objectives fall into cell B2, this then remind the authors to there might be some misunderstanding regarding the second and the third objectives, and after they reclassifying these objectives, it produces a better alignment. Secondly, it is obvious that there are not many activities, which indicates the input from the teacher maybe not enough. Therefore,by working with the framework of the revised Taxonomy, teachers can take correct actions to increase the alignment of objectives, instruction, and assessment, and in turn enhance teaching quality.Table 3: Analysis of the objectives, activities, and assessments in Volcanoes VignetteCritiques on TaxonomyEven though Bloom’s taxonomy has been widely used and welcome across the world, it also has provoked strong philosophical and educational criticism. Though most of its weakness and limitations have been got rid of in its revised version, there are still two obvious shortfalls deserve mention.At first, via separating cognitive skills and knowledge into isolated objectives, Bloom’s taxonomy failed in demonstrating the holistic form of education, the central objectives of which are interrelated ‘elements within integrated developing structures of understanding’ (Hirst, 1974, p.26), that is, items of knowledge or processes of cognitive thinking are not detached from each other but function together in most cases to complete a learning task, and also they required the aid of ‘the mastery of operations with these, and of particular criteria of truth or validity associated with these concepts, as well as more general criteria of reasoning.’(Furst, 1981, p.444). On the hand, breaking knowledge into different fragments of objectives would prohibit students from perceiving it as a whole and hinder creativity, for example, teaching a poem by breaking it into different knowledge fragments would probably ruin its charm. This example herein also proves the incompleteness of the taxonomy, as has been claimed by some psychologists that the affective and psychomotor domains, which actually are overlooked in Bloom’s taxonomy, are indispensible parts of the cognitive framework (Furst, 1981).Second, the cumulative hierarchy of Bloom’s taxonomy has always been questioned. Specifically, Worsnop (2003) argued that Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification system instead of a sequence. He supported his point by a study on how people use software and observed that competent users learn directly from their mistakes (i.e. problem-solving learning) instead of by reading the manual. Raths, though he considered the taxonomy a laudable attempt, felt that mental processes are too complex and overlapping to lend themselves to neat categorization (Raths et al., 1967). Furthermore, Hirst (1974) took deduction of a mathematical theorem for example, stating that people don’t follow a particularsequence of processes to deduce, deduction is an endinstead of a process. Anyhow, in the revised taxonomy this anomaly was eliminated by allowing overlap and admitted that the last two processes could be shifted or equal in some cases.Generally speaking, Bloom’s taxonomy has systematized a field and has provided ‘a common language’ to facilitate communication, ‘a basis’ for making decisions, ‘a means’ for judgment, and ‘a panorama’ for educational possibilities (stated by Bloom, cited in Krathwohl, 2002). Its weakness and limitations then would be tolerable.ConclusionThe Original Bloom’s taxonomy and the Revised Bloom’s taxonomy were introduced accompanied by a comparison on emphasis, terminology and structure. However, the differences in structure and the reasons for important changes (i.e. moving from one dimension to two dimensions, including Metacognitive knowledge) were analyzed with more attention to show how the revised taxonomy overcame the weaknesses and limitations of the original taxonomy. Afterwards, how to apply Bloom’s taxonomy in teaching ( i.e. analyzing curriculum, standards or syllabus, designing instructional activities or assessments, and aligning objectives, activities, and assessments) is illustrated with examples. Two important shortfalls of Bloom’s taxonomy were pointed out in the end with the purpose to alert teachers avoid them in their work.ReferenceAmer, A. (2006). Reflections on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. 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ELT Journal 60(4) . 319-327.Worsnop, R. (2003). A Taxonomy Is Not a Sequence. Education Week, 23(7), 36-47 （注：可编辑下载，若有不当之处，请指正，谢谢!）。