Using Bloom’s Taxonomy
What is Bloom’s Taxonomy
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for their students (learning objectives). The taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago. The terminology has been recently updated to include:
- Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long‐term memory.
- Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
- Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure for executing, or implementing.
- Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
- Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
- Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.
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How Bloom’s works with learning objectives
Fortunately, there are “verb tables” to help identify which action verbs align with each level in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
You may notice that some of these verbs on the table are associated with multiple Bloom’s Taxonomy levels. These “multilevel-verbs” are actions that could apply to different activities. For example, you could have an objective that states “At the end of this lesson, students will be able to explain the difference between H2O and OH-.” This would be an understanding level objective. However, if you wanted the students to be able to “…explain the shift in the chemical structure of water throughout its various phases.” This would be an analyzing level verb.
Adding to this confusion, you can locate Bloom’s verb charts that will list verbs at levels different from what we list below. Just keep in mind that it is the skill, action or activity you will teach using that verb that determines the Bloom’s Taxonomy level.
| Bloom’s Level | Key Verbs (keywords) | Example Learning Objective |
|---|---|---|
| Create | design, formulate, build, invent, create, compose, generate, derive, modify, develop. | By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to design an original homework problem dealing with the principle of conservation of energy. |
| Evaluate | choose, support, relate, determine, defend, judge, grade, compare, contrast, argue, justify, support, convince, select, evaluate. | By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to determine whether using conservation of energy or conservation of momentum would be more appropriate for solving a dynamics problem. |
| Analyze | classify, break down, categorize, analyze, diagram, illustrate, criticize, simplify, associate. | By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to differentiate between potential and kinetic energy. |
| Apply | calculate, predict, apply, solve, illustrate, use, demonstrate, determine, model, perform, present. | By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to calculate the kinetic energy of a projectile. |
| Understand | describe, explain, paraphrase, restate, give original examples of, summarize, contrast, interpret, discuss. | By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to describe Newton’s three laws of motion to in her/his own words |
| Remember | list, recite, outline, define, name, match, quote, recall, identify, label, recognize. | By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to recite Newton’s three laws of motion. |
Learning objective examples adapted from, Nelson Baker at Georgia Tech: nelson.baker@pe.gatech.edu
How Bloom’s works with CQM Methodology
For any system to function, training and coaching is an essential part of its success. No matter how well a system is designed, it is as good as the people who use and advocate it. If the users are trained and coached to understand, apply & create their own methodologies based on the system requirement, self-learning & continuous improvement will begin to improve the entire system. Using the Bloom Taxonomy CQM Experts have an objective to help the team in recognizing and understanding the system, apply it to their roles and responsibilities, and analyze how it could be improved by evaluating and creating their own methodology and action plan.
Interesting Quality Excellence approach to teaching is Quality Matter system by https://www.qualitymatters.org/
For further detail and discussion on this concept don’t hesitate to contact us.
Excerpts from a post by Jessica Shabatura | on https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/
