Bloom's Taxonomy and Higher-Order Thinking

by Shayne Hyman Train

Bloom's Taxonomy is a system of classification of learning objectives for students. Traditionally, the objects are divided into lower-order thinking, where students merely learn and understand facts and higher-order thinking, where we require students to evaluate and create based on their learning.  The system was created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and a team of psychologists, and was revised in 2000 by Lorin Anderson and team. Shown below is the revised version.

One way to judge whether your tasks are higher-order and challenging to students is to look at your rubric. If you can assess based on the four categories of KICA (Knowledge/Understanding, Thinking/Inquiry, Communication and Application) then that's a good indication that you've developed a rich, higher-order task.  Another way to consider this is to see what the product is - if it is a multiple choice quiz, then students are usually just demonstrating Knowledge and Understanding, whereas if the product is an analysis or the creation of something entirely new, they are probably applying all four categories.

Click here for full-sized poster

from Mia MacMeekin's Ethical Island blog.