CPIII Blog
I know that we have discussed Bloom's taxonomy in previous courses, however, recently I (and a few others in the CPIII) have had to read an article, Bloom's Taxonomy: Original and Revised, Mary Forehand, www.coe.uga.edu/eptll/bloom.htm) about it for a course we are taking called pedagogy of theory. The article was mainly informative. It spoke of the initial development of the taxonomy and then went on to talk of how it was revised in the 1990s. Kate and I were talking about how similar the adjectives are to the CP lesson plan model. However, some of the steps seemed to be out of order, in our opinion. The revised taxonomy goes in this order for cognitive domain: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and then creating. Kate made a very good point that if there is going to be any creating, there then must be an evaluation of the creation. However, this is how the intitial taxonomy (1948) was: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and then evaluation.
Then the question arose in my mind, should they have changed it? They did change all of the terms to be verbs instead of nouns, which I think is appropriate considering learning is itself a verb and a doing. The article does not mention if Bloom was involved in the revision, it does not even say if he was alive or not. Bloom died in 1999, and the revision (according to the article was in the 1990s). If Bloom was dead at the time, is this ethical? The person who chose to revise it, Lorin Anderson, was a past student of his. The reason of revision was so that the taxonomy could have more relevance to the students and teachers of the 21st century.