BLOOMS TAXONOMY

Language learning is a complex process and teachers have to reflect on many

aspects of the psychology of successful learning. When it comes to the practical
application of theory, one of the most succinct summaries of how we learn is
Blooms Taxonomy.
Blooms Taxonomy is concerned with classifications of learning objectives
within education. It was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational
psychologist Benjamin Bloom (1913 -1999) in order to promote higher forms of
thinking, such as analysing, and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures
and principles, rather than remembering facts.
Bloom and his colleagues identified three domains of educational activities
(learning) 1:
cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude)
psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)
The Cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual
skills. Bloom categorised and ordered thinking skills and goals along a
continuum from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to Higher Order Thinking
Skills (HOTS), that is, from the most simple (the recall of knowledge) to the
most complex (making judgements about the value of and idea):

BLOOMS REVISED TAXONOMY

1 Benjamin BLOOM, et al. (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain, Longman.

Nowadays there is a international recognition that education is more than just

knowledge and thinking. It also involves teachers and learners feelings, beliefs
and the cultural environment of the classroom. The importance of teaching
thinking and creativity is an important element in modern education. 2
Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, published in 2001 a revised
classification of thinking skills. In this new taxonomy, Anderson changes the
names from nouns to verbs, renames and rearranges some of the levels and
differentiates between the content of thinking (knowledge dimension) and the
procedures used in solving problems (cognitive process dimension) 3.
According to Anderson, the Knowledge dimension is the knowing what and it
has four categories:
Factual knowledge, which includes isolated bits of information, such as
vocabulary definitions and knowledge about specific details.
Conceptual knowledge, which consists of systems of information, such
as classifications and categories.
Procedural knowledge, which includes algorithms, techniques, rules of
thumb, and methods as well as knowledge about when to use these
procedures.
Metacognitive knowledge, which refers to knowledge of thinking
processes and information about how to manipulate these processes
effectively.
The Cognitive process dimension is the knowing how and, as the original
version (Blooms cognitive domain), has six skills organised from simplest to
most complex:

2 Jean BREWSTER, Thinking skills for CLIL. www.onestopenglish.com

3 Lorin ANDERSON, et al. (2001), A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing. A revision of Blooms. Longman.

As said by Anderson, each level of knowledge can correspond to each level of

cognitive process, so a student can remember factual or procedural knowledge,
understand conceptual or metacognitive knowledge, or analyse factual
knowledge.
The following chart lists examples of verbs related to each skill of the Cognitive
Dimension:

CATEGORY

KEY WORDS (VERBS)

Remembering consists of recognizing and define, describe, find, identify, know, label,
recalling relevant information previously list, match, name, outline, recall,
recognise, reproduce, retrieve, select,
learned.
state.
Understanding
is
the
ability
to classify, comprehend, convert, defend,
comprehend the meaning and interpret the distinguish, estimate, explain, exemplify,
extend, generalize, infer, interpret,
instructions and problems.
paraphrase, predict, rewrite, summarize,
translate, understand.
Applying refers to using
procedure in a new situation.

learned apply, carry out, change, compute,

construct, demonstrate, discover,
implement, manipulate, modify, operate,
predict, prepare, produce, relate, show,
solve, use.

Analysing consists of breaking knowledge analyse, break down, compare, contrast,

down into its parts and thinking about how diagram, deconstruct, differentiate,
discriminate, distinguish, find, identify,
the parts relate to its overall structure.
illustrate, infer, integrate, organise, outline,
relate, select, separate, structure.
Evaluating is the ability to make appraise, check, compare, conclude,
judgments about the value of ideas or contrast, criticise, critique, defend,
describe, discriminate, evaluate,
materials.
experiment, explain, interpret, judge,
justify, relate, summarise, support, test.
Creating involves putting things together build, categorise, combine, compile,
compose, construct, create, devise,
to make something new.
design, explain, generate, invent, make,
modify, organise, plan, produce,
rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganise,
revise, rewrite, summarise, tell, write.

Andrew Churches claims that Blooms Revised Taxonomy describes many

traditional classroom practices, behaviours and actions, but does not account
for the new processes and actions associated with Web 2.0 technologies. Thus,
he proposed Blooms Digital Taxonomy, a list of verbs to know what actions
define each stage of the taxonomy. This updated revision is useful when it
comes to use technology in the classroom. An infographic showing Churches
option is found here.

REFERENCES

Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A.,

Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A Taxonomy
for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy
of Educational Objectives. New York: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.

BREWSTER, Jean. Thinking skills for CLIL. Retrieved October 2016 from
www.onestopenglish.com

Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl,
D.R. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The
Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc.
Global Digital Citizen Foundation. Blooms Digital Taxonomy Verbs
[Infographic]. Retrieved October 2016 from
https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/blooms-digital-taxonomy-verbs
Lorin ANDERSON, et al. (2001), A taxonomy for learning, teaching and
assessing. A revision of Blooms. Longman.