Critically analyse the Bloom's Taxonomy of education and how it can be used effectively in the

AFM education system. (25 marks)

Bloom's taxonomy is a long-standing cognitive framework that categorizes critical reasoning in

order to help educators set more well-defined learning goals. Benjamin Bloom, an American
educational psychologist, developed this pyramid to define levels of critical thinking required by
a task. Since its inception in the 1950s and revision in 2001, Bloom's Taxonomy has given
teachers a common vocabulary for naming specific skills required for proficiency.

There are six levels in the taxonomy that each represent distinct levels of abstraction. The bottom
level includes the most basic cognition and the highest level includes the most intellectual and
complicated thinking. The idea behind this theory is that students cannot be successful in
applying higher-order thinking to a topic until they have first mastered a ladder of rudimentary
tasks.

The goal of education is to create thinkers and doers. Bloom's taxonomy gives a path to follow
from the beginning of a concept or skill to its end, or to the point where students can think
creatively about a topic and solve problems for themselves. Learn to incorporate all levels of the
framework into your teaching and lesson plans in order to scaffold the learning that your students
are doing.

In the remembering level of the taxonomy, which used to be known as the knowledge level,
questions are used solely to assess whether a student remembers what they have learned. This is
the bottom level of the taxonomy because the work that students are doing when remembering is
the simplest. Remembering commonly presents in the form of fill-in-the-blank, true or false, or
multiple-choice style questions. These can be used to determine whether students have
memorized important dates for a particular time period, can recall the main ideas of a lesson, or
can define terms.

Understanding Level
The understanding level of Bloom's Taxonomy moves students slightly beyond fact recall into
understanding the information presented. This used to be known as comprehension. Within
understanding, students encounter questions and tasks where they interpret facts rather than state

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them. Instead of naming cloud types, for example, students demonstrate understanding by
explaining how each type of cloud is formed.

Applying Level
Application questions ask students to apply or use the knowledge or skills that they have
acquired. They might be asked to use information that they have been given to create a viable
solution to a problem. For example, a student might be asked to solve a mock Supreme Court
case using the Constitution and its amendments to determine what is constitutional.

Analyzing Level
In the analyzing level of this taxonomy, students demonstrate whether they can identify patterns
to solve problems. They differentiate between subjective and objective information in order to
analyze and come to conclusions using their best judgment. An English teacher wanting to assess
student analyzing skills might ask what the motives were behind a protagonist's actions in a
novel. This requires students to analyze the traits of that character and come to a conclusion
based on a combination of this analysis and their own reasoning.

Evaluating Level
When evaluating, a level previously known as synthesis, students use given facts to create new
theories or make predictions. This requires them to apply skills and concepts from multiple
subjects at once and synthesize this information before coming to a conclusion. If, for example, a
student is asked to use data sets of ocean level and climate trends to predict ocean levels in five
years, this type of reasoning is considered evaluating.

Creating Level
The highest tier of Bloom's taxonomy is called creating, previously known as evaluation.
Students demonstrating their ability to create must know how to make judgments, ask questions,
and invent something new. Questions and tasks within this category might require students to
assess author bias or even the validity of a law by analyzing information presented and forming
opinions, which they must always be able to justify with evidence. Often, creating tasks ask
students to identify problems and invent solutions for them (a new process, an item, etc.).

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