When we hear a pedagogical term such as this, it can make us feel unsure and insecure about new knowledge and teaching methodologies, however it is very likely that we are already practising Bloom’s Taxonomy in our classrooms on a daily basis.
So, what is Bloom’s taxonomy?
The most famous researcher of higher-level thinking was Benjamin Bloom et at (1956), who published his very useful framework, which Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) then reworked into 6 levels.
It is a model used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity.
Or in other words it is a model that demonstrates the levels of difficulty that we work through to develop our students’ learning from basic recall to higher order levels of critical and evaluative thinking.
At the lower or bottom levels of the triangle, we are using teaching strategies that encourage our students to remember or recall information that they have learned. In a lesson this may be when we ask students to tell us the characters that were in a story they read or tell us the method of working out a sum in maths.
We would then likely progress with our students’ skills by asking them to complete a task which demonstrates the skill they have learned, so for example to write a description of the characters they have learned or complete some sums using the method of working out.
The students would then be moving upwards towards the top of the triangle of skills or Bloom’s Taxonomy model.
In order to then really stretch our students and move to more independent and critical thinking skills, we would set tasks such as evaluating the purpose of characters in a text – why has the writer included them? Or perhaps students could present their math’s strategies and “teach” another group who were less secure about the method.
So, actually, we are using Bloom’s Taxonomy in our everyday teaching; we just need to be constantly aware of it and that we are creating opportunities for our students to progress towards the top of the model.
For more information and examples please take our course “Asking Questions in the Classroom”.
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Questioning in the Classroom
The “Questioning in the Classroom” series will examine the significance of questioning and questioning techniques in our roles as educators. Questioning takes on a different perspective and emphasis, one in which we need to understand in detail to ensure it becomes an effective teaching tool for us.
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