Blooms Taxonomy

Chart of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

image not loading

Many instructors use "Bloom's Taxonomy" as a framework when designing learning objectives to find suitable "action verbs".  Blooms' taxonomy recommends action verbs that can be used when writing learning objectives based on sound learning theory. It is a framework for classifying different ways of thinking about and ordering objectives. It applied sound learning theory research to provide a list of action verbs Links to an external site. that can be used when crafting learning objectives. 

According to Bloom (1956), learning occurs in three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Within the cognitive domain, Bloom categorizes and orders thinking skills and objectives from lower-order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills in six levels: remember (e.g., define, identify, recall, reproduce), understand (e.g., clarify, compare, describe, discuss), apply (e.g., demonstrate, discover, investigate, predict), analyze (e.g., compare, explain, outline, relate), evaluate (e.g., assess, conclude, predict, validate), and create (e.g., categorize, construct, formulate, summarize). Although this domain might be considered the most important, the other domains can be targeted if your desired learning outcomes involve students developing emotional abilities like being responsive to their audience when giving a presentation (affective) or physical skills needed to complete a task like carrying out specific safety protocols (psychomotor).

In addition to these domains, Nilson (2010) identified social and ethical learning domains. The social domain supports students in learning about how to effectively interact with other people (e.g. working collaboratively on a team). The ethical domain involves consideration of the moral implications of decisions students may have to make (e.g. how products they develop will affect other people in society).

There have been several revisions made to Bloom’s taxonomy in the recent decade. For this course, we recommend you refer to a revision called the Bloom's Taxonomy Adapted Model Download Bloom's Taxonomy Adapted Model. Refer to this adapted model to help write your learning objectives and select appropriate assessment items for your own course(s). For more information, please refer to the optional reading material at the end of this module.

Reference(s)

  • Anderson, L.W. and Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
  • Bloom, B., Krathwohl, D., & Masia, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. New York, NY: D. McKay.
  • Bloom, B., Engelhart, M., Furst, E., Hill, W., & Krathwohl, D. (1974). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. (B. Bloom, Ed.). New York, NY: David McKay.
  • Churches, A. (2008). Bloom's digital taxonomy. http://www.ccconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Churches_2008_DigitalBloomsTaxonomyGuide.pdf. Links to an external site.
  • Clark, B. (2007). Growing up gifted: Developing the potential of children at home and at school (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
  • Mager, R.F. (1984). Developing attitude toward learning (2nd ed.). Atlanta, GA: The Center for Effective Performance Inc.
  • Nilson, L. (2010). Teaching at its best. (3rd ed.) San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.