Unquestionably, It looks like Benjamin Bloom designed a holistic plan to empower student to withstand in any situation in his or her journey of life or in the process of true human development. Hence a detailed explanation of bloom taxonomy become unavoidable.
Bloom’s taxonomy is an innovative learning as well as testing tool for both students community and teaching fraternity.
It is a hierarchic arrangements of orders begins with from basic level difficulty to higher level complexities. Here I’m going to present a detailed explanation of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Who is Benjamin Bloom?
He was renowned scholar and educator who believed in meaningful learning instead to upload dead facts on young minds. Bloom strongly opposed the one way traffic of transferring facts for unquestioning mind.
Undoubtedly, he was one who revolutionized the learning as well as teaching techniques. And, later on, debates and discussions over the pros and cons of rote learning Vs meaningful learning was the direct outcome of Bloom’s contribution.
Now, most of the nations are drifting away from rote learning methods and planning to incorporate objectives of meaningful learning. Recent move by China is the best example.
General outline or a detailed explanation of Bloom taxonomy
Benjamin Bloom was the leading figure among educators who was assigned to design learning goals or objectives.
Committee found there important domain to be internalised in the course of learning. These are cognitive, affective, and sensory or psychomotor domain.
- Cognitive domain
- Affective domain
- Sensory or psychomotor domain
It looks like they have designed a holistic plan to empower student to withstand in any situation in his or her journey of life or true human development.
A. Explanation of Cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy
It is a hierarchy of six important learning tasks or exercise that begins with mere remembering and ends with higher level creation.
The aim of cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy is to present a roadmap of systematic learning to cultivate students intellectual abilities right from the elementary level.
Researchers thoughtfully designed the hierarchy of objectives with growing difficulty. Following are the six levels of learning tasks in the growing level of difficulty.
Understanding Objectives of cognitive domain
Cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy is the most important one that designed cultivate and improve the learning capabilities of learning community.
Cognitive domain includes six objectives that are presented in the level of rising difficulty. Let’s know the objectives of cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy in detail
Explanation of objectives of cognitive domain
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyse
- Evaluate
- Create
These are the six objectives of cognitive domain that I’m going to explain one by one.
1.Remember — basic level
We know that the goal of education is to “Retain and transfer” whatever you read, learn etc.
Retain implies recalling or reproducing information you stored in your memory whether it is short or long-term memory.
And, “Transfer” means application of knowledge or information you retained in need you think.
In this way, the goal of education is consistent with the basic task of revised version of cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Important keywords belong to”Remember” are,
List, outline, recall, reproduce, know, selects, names, labels, etc.
2.Understand — begin to know what and why
In the revised version, it is just renamed the earlier “Comprehend” objective or task.
In the first level, it was the test of retrieval or recalling whatever you retained. But, in the second level, you need to go deeper to know more about the thing in question.
Here, it is not enough to answer what but why as well. Simply, knowing details of given thing is necessary.
Related keywords for understand are
Summarise,rewrite, translate, paraphrase, interpret, give an example, infer, generalize etc.
3.Applying — theory –to–practical
Third level of cognitive domain is about to experience practical of knowledge you gained, retained, understood in the classroom. Let it be, formula, theorem, theory, or any concept.
Applying means testing the relevancy, effectivity, and usefulness in the practical situation.
Vital keywords for applying level are — construct, discover, demonstrate, manipulate, modify, prepare, produce, apply, use, etc.
4.Analyse — know the mechanism of components to form whole
Understanding each element in detail in terms of properties, roles, functions etc. For example, if you are a bike mechanic, it is essential to know the details of each component so as to ensure proper functioning.
For that to happen, it is your duty to know each characteristic including composition, role, function etc.
Related keywords for analysing are — compare, break down, differentiate, distinguish, identify, separate etc.
5.Evaluate — assessing values of something
Evaluation means making unbiased judgement of thing in question to make it more effective, relevant and useful in the course of time.
It includes evaluation against itself, against better’one, and evaluate against ideal that is not exist.
Justify, criticize, contrast, conclude, judge etc. are the related keywords for evaluate.
6.Create — formulate policies, plans, etc.
The last and most difficult level or objectives included in the revised version of cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Precisely, it means making complete new thing from available resources as a best alternative to available one.
The purpose of this level is to empower students to find effective solutions to the formidable challenges that have hardly solution.
Compile, compose, make, formulate, attempt, generate, rewrite, etc. are relevant keywords for create.
So far, I have discussed all the objectives of cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy that is revised version.
These are the revised learning objectives of cognitive domain.
B.Affective domain of Bloom’s taxonomy
Positive attitude is a motivating force of student to go for greater target or achievement. As per the committee of educators, mere knowledge and skills can’t be enough if person fails to achieve emotional maturity and intelligence. It is one of the most vital constituents of holistic education.
Like cognitive domain, affective is also structured in the same sequence of difficulty level — simpler to complex.
Affective domain has five task begin with simpler receiving and ends with characterization.
Objectives of affective domain
In Bloom’s taxonomy, there are five objectives are prescribed by the committee of educational scientists to cultivate, shape, and improve personality of learners. Here, you will know more about the objectives of affective domain of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Explaining Objectives of affective domain of Bloom’s taxonomy
There are five objectives of affective domain are chose to teach the learning community. These are receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization. Let’s see one by one in more detailed way.
1.Receiving — being a receiver for salient points of happening
“Receiving” is the first level that highlights the importance of being astute receiver or witness of happening around you but deliberate.
Context is to know the person or thing you encountered first time and retain as well as remember them. Simply, the way you receive is directly correlated to understand ing and knowing.
Follow, listen, know, ask, attentive are the important related keywords for receiving.
2.Responding — response on the basis you received
Once you become aware about you received matter or thing, you can respond in return if you think it is worth to respond.
In other words, be the active participant in the activity as a learner to be more and more aware through discussion and debate regarding specific issue.
Perform, Present, tell, answer, discuss, help, assist are some vital releted keywords for responding.
3.Valuing — you like or dislike things you aware about
If you are fully aware about the phenomenon or activity, you try to either appreciate or oppose object or activity on the ground of your believing or prior knowledge.
For layman’s language, it is a like affinity or dislike to a thing or phenomenon you know better.
Example of valuing
Suppose, you experienced an incidents of ragging in campus when you were fresher. And, next time, you are witnessing same incidents happening with someone else. In this situation what would you do?
Definitely, you will participate in the demonstration opposing ragging and will demand stern punishment.
Here, you are infavour of respecting dignity of freshers. And, at the same time, you are a critic of ragging. This is how you develop your value system over a period of time. But, one thing you must not forget that values are much more than mere beliefs.
However, you can not be so committed to eveything you think to be preserved or protected. You can’t be so committed in case of climate change and other national issues.
What I want to assert is that the degree of your believing on the basis of your value system may differ.
Appreciate, justify, demonstrate, cherish, propose respect are some related keywords for valuing.
4.Organization — it involves formation of value system
Environment Vs development, freedom Vs cultural identities are certain face-offs you need to resolve before you construct final value system.
It is upon you to decide which value you want to uphold to show your support and commitment in the course of life.
Prioritisation is the precondition to form character or image. Such character or image you formed become the easy Identity among people around you.
Compare, contrast, relate, harmonize, synthesis are alike keywords for organization.
5.Characterization — making value system part of your personality.
Now, you have a concrete ground to take decisions; you can power your commitment; influence people by your content instead appearance.
Final thought on objectives of affective domain
Finally, you might have realised the importance of affective domain of Bloom’s taxonomy in making, shaping, and refining the best personality with the help of prescribed objectives.
C.Sensory or psychomotor domain
Cognitive domain focuses on cultivating intellectual abilities, while sensory and psychomotor domain aims to inculcate physical skills that includes all forms of physical movements, coordination and other motor skills and movements.
- Perception
- Set
- Guided response
- Mechanism
- Complex overt response
- Adaptation
- Origination
Handicrafts, engineering, art works, all and everything that requires physical activities, fall in the psychomotor or sensory domain.
Obviously, its perfection, precision and speed have huge bearing on person’s economic life. That’s why sensory domain is a inseparable part of holistic learning mission devised under the leadership of Benjamin Bloom from 1950s to till today modification and refinement is continue.
Final thought on explanation of bloom taxonomy,
So far, we have learnt that it was Benjamin Bloom who designed a holistic plan to empower student to withstand in any situation in his or her journey of life. It was nothing but learning objectives as Bloom Taxonomy.
It was the game changing move. Because, it is an innovative learning as well as testing tool for both students community and teaching fraternity.
Benjamin Bloom was a renowned scholar and educator who believed in meaningful learning instead to upload dead facts on young minds. Bloom strongly opposed the one way traffic of transferring facts for unquestioning mind.
Cognitive, affective, and sensory or psychomotor domain constitute the Bloom Taxonomy. Basically, the aim of cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy is to present a roadmap of systematic learning to cultivate students intellectual abilities right from the elementary level.
As per the committee of educators, mere knowledge and skills can’t be enough if person fails to achieve emotional maturity and intelligence. Affective domain is one of the most vital constituents of holistic education.
Finally, sensory and psychomotor domain aims to inculcate physical skills that includes all forms of physical movements, coordination and other motor skills and movements.
This all about the detailed explanation of bloom taxonomy with cognitive affective and sensory or psychomotor domains.
Solved Questions on explanation of bloom taxonomy
Q. 1.Who was Benjamin Bloom? For what he is known for?
Ans: Benjamin Bloom was renowned scholar and educator who believed in meaningful learning instead to upload dead facts on young minds.
He was the leading figure among educators who was assigned to design learning goals or objectives.
Committee found there important domain to be internalised in the course of learning. These are cognitive, affective, and sensory or psychomotor domain. We call it as bloom taxonomy.
Dilectical approach of George Simmel