Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Bloom and others

! The groups first stated purpose is to put down a taxonomy of educational

objectives so that they may be precisely and easily discussed among interested researchers and educators. One classroom use that is mentioned is that understanding of what types of learning (via the taxonomy) are already in a class unit can lead to better use of additional class time or better assessment.

! ! A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment Anderson and others ! ... Bloom said the original Handbook was one of the most widely cited yet least read books in American education (xxiii) ! The foreword points out that the original purpose for the taxonomy was to aid in
discussion assessment questions by providing a vocabulary to classify the purpose of a given question. The introduction refines this to meet current needs in teaching. Specifically, with the rise of explicit state education standards and accompanying testing, communication between standards makers and teachers must be clear and precise. E.g. what do these standards mean and how do they help teachers teach better and students learn better (paraphrase, 4).

! The new taxonomy is two-dimensional, which is to say that each statement

utilizing it will consist of two parts: a cognitive process and a piece of knowledge. For example, The student will learn to differentiate between rational numbers and irrational numbers. Process: differentiate, Knowledge: rational numbers and irrational numbers

! Different 2-D categories on the taxonomy suggest different forms of teaching.

Analyze conceptual knowledge might be taught by focusing on categories and classifications, using practice examples to work on applying the categories, etc. (8). Remember factual knowledge, on the other hand, could be practiced by reminding students of the facts to be remembered, suggesting memory techniques, and drilling the fact through quizzes or the like (8).

! Assessments for different categories are also different. One important point is

that care must be taken to not inadvertently test the wrong knowledge. In some cases, a question that is intended to test conceptual knowledge can be answered by a student with only factual knowledge, for example if a test question is verbatim from the text book.

! One final beneficial aspect of the taxonomy is as a method for measuring the degree of standards alignment of objectives, instruction, and assessment. ! What is the solution to objectives that require two or more taxonomic categories?
For example, the plan a unit of instruction example is called conceptual creation, but planning instruction certainly must require some procedural knowledge in order to follow the best practices of education.

! An interesting though under they why section of chapter 3 is that using a

categorization scheme such as this allows the teacher to look at the objectives from the students eye. They can ask themselves whether remembering a list of facts is sufficient to be able to do later activities or if the students will need to

understand conceptual information. Such a scheme also allows teachers to systematically think of new ways to teach. By categorizing what they already do, they can see what they are not doing. That kind of high-end emphasis is probably the most subjective of the taxonomys work; there are probably other categories that could be considered. Possibly not, though (leastwise I cant think of any right now).

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