Planning Ideas

Bloom’s six cognitive processes

Bloom’s Taxonomy

What is Bloom’s Taxonomy?

Have you ever thought about what types of knowledge (information) are in your courses? Bloom’s Taxonomy is an analytical tool that helps you to identify the types of knowledge that are in your courses. Have you ever thought about what you want your students to do with these types of knowledge? Bloom’s Taxonomy helps you to identify the types of thinking that students need in your courses.

Ask Yourself…

  • Are you looking for a tool to help you with the “how” of teaching your discipline?
  • Are you wondering how you can assess students’ learning outcomes accurately?
  • Are you looking for the basic language in the science of education?

What can I use Bloom’s Taxonomy for?

It is particularly useful in designing a course. It can be used to analyze the statements of competency and performance criteria of any course to help you write learning outcomes/objectives, design appropriate assessments and choose appropriate instructional strategies (class learning activities). Basically, there are more effective ways to help students learn different types of knowledge and to think in certain ways:

Bloom’s taxonomy helps you to align (match) the knowledge/skills and ways of thinking of your course with its instructional strategies and assessment tasks to make your students’ learning more effective.

Benefits of Understanding and Using Bloom’s Taxonomy

  • Helps you to identify the essential/key knowledge and skills from your course
  • Helps you to design effective and valid assessment tools that align (match) course learning objectives

Two Main Elements of Bloom’s Taxonomy

The information below will introduce you to the features of the two main elements of Bloom’s Taxonomy and offer suggestions on how you can use this analytical tool to aid your students’ learning. Hopefully you will also see that the types of knowledge and cognitive processes are linked. This is quite technical information, but it is essential knowledge for teachers to effectively design courses. The Course Design & Planning and Learning Outcomes & Objectives pages require some understanding of this information.

To learn more about Bloom’s two main elements check out: 

  1. Types of Knowledge (PDF)
    – Factual (Declarative) Knowledge, Conceptual Knowledge, Procedural Knowledge & Metacognitive Knowledge
  2. Cognitive (Types of Students’ Thinking) Processes (PDF) 
    – Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analysing, Evaluating & Creating (Synthesizing)

These levels of learning give you the foundation needed to succeed in college. From abstract ideas to logical reasoning, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a proven successful model for college learning.

What are the Affective & Psychomotor Domains?

In these resources we have only discussed one of the 3 domains in Bloom’s taxonomy as the cognitive domain is the most useful for teaching-learning. The Affective and Psychomotor domains are briefly outlined below. To read more about the Affective and Psychomotor Domains you should read the information in the Teaching and Learning Handbook (PDF).

The Affective Domain helps teachers and students understand the way people react emotionally and their ability to empathize with others. The objective is to provide teachers with a model of student awareness and growth in attitudes and emotions and opinions.

There are five levels in the affective domain from lowest to highest: 1) Receiving, 2) Responding, 3) Valuing, 4) Organizing, 5) Characterizing

To learn more check out: Affective Domain (PDF)

Extend Your Learning

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a renowned model for gauging competence in the world of Learning & Development. It is quite important to understand the taxonomy in the world of business. This simple video is derived from expert input and the presentation style is deliberately kept simple and concise.