Foo Foo About: Bloom’s Taxonomy

Here are some online resources about this Foo Foo/ Myth…

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Problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy – Brenda Sugrue, PhD – October, 2002

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Challenging Bloom’s Taxonomy

August 24, 2011

Have had a few thought provoking debates recently about the validity of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Yes, that’s right, a challenge to the orthodoxy! I’ve read through a selection of articles which all point to the fact that there is no real evidence base to support Bloom’s theories and worse, thinking in this rigid, hierarchical way can even be damaging! Can it be true?

One criticism is that it can lead to teachers not really thinking through the different categories of thinking skills each time they’re used which lead students to think superficially. Any classification of skills along the lines of Bloom’s can aid critical thinking but only if it is used critically. I guess my concern is that use of Bloom’s Taxonomy has become wholly uncritical in many cases.

For more… http://www.learningspy.co.uk/learning/challenging-blooms-taxonomy/

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The Need for a Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy – PDF

PROBLEMS WITH BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

As influential as Bloom’s Taxonomy has been on educational practice, it has experienced some severe criticisms (for a review, see Kreitzer & Madaus, 1994). One of the most common criticisms was that the taxonomy oversimplified the nature of thought and its relationship to learning (Furst, 1994).

The taxonomy certainly expanded the conception of learning from a simple, unidimensional, behaviorist model to one that was multidimensional and more constructivist in nature. However, it assumed a rather simple construct of difficulty as the characteristic separating one level from another: Superordinate levels involved more difficult cognitive processes than did subordinate levels. The research conducted on Bloom’s Taxonomy simply did not support this structure. For example, educators who were trained in the structure of Bloom’s Taxonomy were consistently unable to recognize questions at higher levels as more difficult than questions at lower levels of the taxonomy (see Fairbrother, 1975; Poole, 1972; Stanley & Bolton, 1957).

The problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy were indirectly acknowledged by its authors.

This is evidenced in their discussion of analysis: “It is probably more defensible educationally to consider analysis as an aid to fuller comprehension (a lower class level) or as a prelude to an evaluation of the 8 The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives 01-Marzano-45105.qxd 11/23/2006 12:17 PM Page 8

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