Overview

Not all thinking is the same. Remembering a phone number is easy. Designing a spaceship is hard. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a pyramid that ranks thinking skills from simple to complex. Teachers use it to make sure they aren’t just teaching kids to memorize facts.

Core Idea

The core idea is Levels of Thinking. You have to crawl before you can walk. You have to Remember before you can Understand, and Understand before you can Create.

Formal Definition

A hierarchical model used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity. The Levels (Revised): Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create.

Intuition

  • The Pyramid:
    • Bottom (Remember): “What is the capital of France?” (Paris).
    • Middle (Apply): “Calculate the distance from Paris to London.”
    • Top (Create): “Design a new transportation system for Paris.”

Examples

  • Bad Test: A test that only asks multiple-choice questions about dates and names. It only tests the bottom level (Remembering).
  • Good Project: “Build a bridge out of popsicle sticks.” This requires Analysis (physics), Evaluation (testing), and Creation (building).

Common Misconceptions

  • Higher is always better: No. You need the bottom levels. You can’t analyze the causes of WWII if you don’t remember who fought in it. The goal is to master all levels.
  • Metacognition: Thinking about thinking. “How do I learn best?”
  • Depth of Knowledge (Webb): A similar model, but focused on how deep you have to think, not just the type of thinking.

Applications

  • Lesson Planning: Teachers write objectives like: “Students will be able to evaluate the impact of…” instead of “Students will know…”

Criticism / Limitations

  • Rigidity: Thinking isn’t always linear. Sometimes you “Create” something first (messing around with code) and then “Understand” how it works later.

Further Reading

  • Anderson, Lorin. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing.