Is Bloom's Taxonomy Still Relevant Today?

This week's article summary is It May Be Time to Dump Bloom's Taxonomy.

I vividly remember in graduate school discussing ad nauseam the classroom uses of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

You probably remember the basic idea behind the taxonomy: different kinds of teacher questions (Bloom's verbs) result in different levels of student thinking from the simplest (remembering, understanding) to the most complex (applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating). When I taught World History to 8th graders, I used Bloom’s verbs to make sure test questions challenged students with different levels of thinking.

Even though my teaching was influenced by Bloom, I was a never a total zealot to the taxonomy. As with any idea in education, I use what I think makes sense to me but rarely adopt all aspects of it. One negative of the taxonomy was the idea that thinking is one-dimensional and progressive when we all know thinking is much more multi-dimensional and complex.

I’ve seen a lot of educational fads and trends come, go, and then return again (often re-packaged with new terminology to make the old seem new): curriculum mapping, right/left brain use, class management systems, learning styles, 21st century skills, problem-based learning, design thinking, reading/writing workshop. My bookshelves are filled with educational books that promised to revolutionize the art and science of teaching; they all had kernels of good advice yet fell short of dramatically changing how we teach or how students learn.

As we know from experience, most ideas in education have some attributes while also containing some detriments. 

As educators, we all continue to further hone our teaching philosophy and skill set. We take a little from various education ideas but should always be skeptical of the promise of one perfect solution for the multitude of individuality we meet—and celebrate—in the classroom.

Joe

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Over my 40-year career in education, I have come to recognize that what I was taught back in college about being an effective teacher is not necessarily true today. 

It’s not just because times have changed (they have), students have changed (they have), or the world has changed (it has). It’s because, over the past 30 years, more research has been done on what works best in teaching and learning than in all the years before that. And the results of all of that research are startling, to say the least. One of the most astonishing findings has to do with the value of following Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The taxonomy was created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and some of his colleagues as a way to leave behind behaviorist theories of learning that were being used at the time (memorization, rote learning) and embrace higher-order thinking skills. They incorporated aspects of cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor domains into the taxonomy to make it more all-encompassing. It was a radical change in how educators were taught to teach. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy is easy to implement. We are all familiar with the “verb chart” that lets us select the level of thinking we want our students to work at. We pick a content standard, decide what level it is best learned at, find a verb at that level in the chart, create the learning activity, and we’re done. But is this approach still valid today?

The first reason to reconsider using Bloom’s Taxonomy in the classroom has to do with how the brain works. Thinking does not operate within hierarchies (as outlined in the taxonomy). All of these “levels” happen simultaneously in a variety of places in the brain.

The second reason to stop relying on Bloom’s is that it was created before rigorous research into its effectiveness was put in place. At more than 60 years old, the taxonomy is simply not supported by any empirical research on learning. The only piece of this hierarchical approach that is validated today is the existence of factual-conceptual knowledge, often called prior knowledge. But there is no clear research on its basic assumption that there are lower- and higher-order thinking skills. The brain doesn’t look at a problem to be solved and decide that it only needs a lower-order process.

The third reason Bloom’s may not be the approach you want to follow in your classroom has to do with new research on the social relation of persons in the creation of knowledge. The taxonomy does not consider the learner and the differences that each learner brings to the table. Motivation, their intellectual values, their past experiences with the content, their differences in cognitive processing: none of these are considered. The approach is based on the belief that all learners are at the same place in their learning, which is inherently false. In short, Bloom’s Taxonomy focuses on abstract cognitive domains and not on the individual learner. It is teacher-centered and not student-centered.

We need to put time, effort, and focus into instructional strategies and approaches that we know will work best for our students. And I believe that we must stay current with what the latest (and verified!) research says in order to do so. Be open to new ideas and new ways to help your students master the content. Question the strategies that are your “favorites” and ensure that they are based on valid, current research. And talk with your colleagues and administrators about professional learning and research on the most effective teaching methods.