Bloom

Six Levels of Thinking

Orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped in the 1950’s, Bloom’s Tax­on­o­my of Learn­ing has sub­se­quent­ly been updat­ed and used in all sec­tors of edu­ca­tion. It is a hier­ar­chy of learn­ing based on the cog­ni­tive, phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al domains of learn­ing, orga­nized across six main cat­e­gories, start­ing with low­er order think­ing and mov­ing upward to high­er order think­ing skills. The six major cat­e­gories start­ing with low­er order think­ing are:

• Remem­ber
• Under­stand
• Apply
• Ana­lyze
• Eval­u­ate
• Cre­ate

Pros of Bloom

• helps both stu­dents and teach­ers iden­ti­fy what they’re aim­ing for in the learn­ing / teach­ing process
• pro­vides clear and con­cise lan­guage for explain­ing learn­ing out­comes
• helps us iden­ti­fy the range of think­ing process­es across cog­ni­tive domains to ensure we pro­vide  com­pre­hen­sive learn­ing expe­ri­ences

Cons of Bloom

• may lead to learn­ing out­comes that over­ly focus on high­er order think­ing, dis­re­gard­ing how the low­er and high­er order lev­els inter­sect (e.g., you need to remember/learn some con­cepts before you can eval­u­ate and cre­ate)
• does not include the spir­i­tu­al aspect of learn­ing (see LaFever sec­tion)
• over­ly focus­ing on how to artic­u­late learn­ing out­comes using Bloom’s list of verbs miss­es the cru­cial point of align­ing learn­ing out­comes with course activ­i­ties

If you’re new to Bloom’s Tax­on­o­my of Learn­ing, vis­it the page on How to Write Learn­ing Out­comes