blooms

BLOOM'S TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES
IN THE COGNITIVE DOMAIN

(Originally published 1954; transcribed and annotated by John Cross for LBST 499)

Notes: These objectives are listed in order of increasing difficulty. The objectives in each class are likely to make use of and be built on behaviors in the preceding classes. People often consider the goal of education to be "acquiring facts," particularly at the undergraduate level. Bloom's Taxonomy articulates a broader vision that is even more pertinent fifty years after it was published. When people want facts, they have the power of the Internet readily at hand. A university education should demand higher level intellectual skills to deal with the complexity of real problems.

KNOWLEDGE

1) Knowledge (or Awareness) - The ability to remember, or bring to mind appropriate facts and concepts. The ability to demonstrate knowledge may be acquired by rote drill. Knowledge may be measured by recall, recognition, reconstruction, identification, correction, or completion. The ability to retrieve facts from external sources, such as reference books or computer databases, is a related skill. The following five cognitive behavioral goals each build upon the previous behaviors in a hierarchical manner.

INTELLECTUAL ABILITIES AND SKILLS

2) Comprehension - The ability to understand what is being communicated and make use of it by relating the basic idea to other ideas of seeing its fullest meaning. Requires knowledge of facts, principles, and conditions. Attained by replication, lecture-recitation, paraphrasing, and other activities.

3) Application - The ability to use ideas, principles, etc., in discrete and particular situations. Concrete examples lead to the acquisition of this level of cognitive behavior in a knowledge domain. "Practicum," which is practice, or internship, are further appropriate activities for invoking this level of cognitive behavior. Application requires comprehension, which requires knowledge, which illustrates the hierarchical nature of Bloom's taxonomy.

4) Analysis - The ability to break down a communication into constituent parts to make the organization of ideas clear. Typical behaviors: interpretation, guided discovery, convergent examination.

5) Synthesis - The ability to put together parts and elements into a unified whole, or organize and construct a new concept.

6) Evaluation - The ability to judge the value of ideas, methods, procedures, algorithms, etc., using appropriate strategies. Behaviors include divergence, examination, and inquiry by discovery.

JAC: 4/89; 8/95; 2/00; 1/02; 4/02

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