Bloom's taxonomy

This particular sequence is good for teaching ideas, theories, approaches, and methods. It is based on what is known as Bloom s taxonomy. Benjamin Bloom was the chair of a committee that published this very influential book in 1956. It is a way of categorizing educational goals and activities according to kinds of thought processes. It has been revised multiple times, and it is easy to get more detailed information from the internet.

It takes considerable training and practice to get right for planning educational activities, but it's excellent when you do.

The lower levels

Recall is the lowest level. It simply requires students to remember information. What are the facts or basic items of information? Start by getting students to answer the basic What? questions, without interpreting or jumping to conclusions.

Comprehension is the next level, and has three sublevels:

1. Translation. Express the basic information into a different form, or identify it in a different form. This is a very useful way to teach for understanding. For example, get students to:
• express in your own words
• tell as a story
• draw as a picture or diagram
• make up a role-play
• create an example or a case study.
2. Explain the relationship between different elements. This is usually fairly difficult, because you have to pick out elements that don't have self-explanatory interrelationships.)
3. Identify or explore implications and/or consequences. This is also very useful, although you might need to give clear examples for students to explore. Ask questions like
• "What would happen if …?"
• "What else could happen?"
• "What kind of results would you expect?"
• "Who else would be affected by ?"
• "What kind of responses might you get?"
4. Application: how to put it into practice.

The higher levels

Teaching higher level thinking is normally necessary in higher education, you can add a whole new level of sophistication. In the 2001 revised version, the top three levels are now given as verbs and put in a different order, with Create as the highest level:

1. Analyze. What are the fundamental elements, motives, or causes? Is there a pattern? Give evidence to support your analysis.
2. Evaluate. Make judgments about the value of something, considering strengths, weaknesses, limitations or validity. You might use a set of existing criteria (possibly simplifying the task to application), adapt existing criteria, or devise a new set of criteria. Give evidence to support your analysis. (Warning. Unjustified opinions are not evidence of good evaluation.)
3. Create. Combine the elements in a new way to create a new solution or concept.

A way to use the taxonomy

1. Start by teaching two or more alternative methods to perform the same kind of task, going up to implementation level on the taxonomy.

2. Compare those methods and answer some higher-level, more theoretical questions:
   1. Analyse. Comparing the various methods, what are the fundamental elements of the task?
   2. Evaluate. Draw informed conclusions on the strengths, weaknesses, limitations and validity of each approach and of the combined whole.
   3. Create: Could we re-arrange these fundamental elements in a new way and create a new method or theory?