I
think that we are all on board with saying that Bloom's Taxonomy has value.
The problem, however, is in the degree to which his cognitive domain has
been obsessed over and accepted, uncritically, to the point that it has become
a quasi-religious creed in education. I, by the way, use Bloom when
designing performance tasks and assessments. His adjectives for describing
different levels of complexity in thinking are extremely handy. Here are
a few points of qualification I would make, though:
1.
Bloom has been, since the 1950s, challenged by a number of scholars.
While it is extremely difficult (I would say scandalous) for anyone to
claim proven-ness when it comes to cognition (new research debunks old
assumptions on nearly a daily basis), the various challenges to Bloom,
particularly Moore (1982) and Bereiter & Scardamalia (1998), demonstrate
that there are, at least, a number of ways to "cut the cake."
2.
Bloom's Taxonomy has seduced many into believing that the various levels of the
domain are skills that, if mastered, could be simply transferred to various
content domains (i.e., higher order thinking skills). Learners, in fact,
have varying levels of ability at different tiers within the taxonomy. To
revisit the critical thinking subject, depending on background knowledge and an
individuals interests and talents, the same student may be able to think at the
highest levels of the taxonomy in a preferred subject, but may not about to
think at the lowest levels in another subject. Bobby Fischer could engage
in higher order thinking in chess, but in most other ways, he was incompetent
and eccentric (not that these two always go together). I was always (and
still am) stronger in history, sociology, political science, etc., than I am in
mathematics. I have some ability to evaluate, synthesize and analyze in
social studies, but practically no ability to do that in math. This is
because critical thinking has to be critical thinking about something.
While critical thinking might be a "broad purpose skill," it is
not readily and broadly transferrable from domain to domain, and it does not
exist divorced from subject-specific content: "The only thing that
transforms reading skill and critical thinking skill into general all-purpose
abilities is a person's possession of general, all-purpose knowledge"
(Hirsch, 2006, p. 12).
3.
Thinking at the "lower level" of the taxonomy is not "entry
level" thinking, and thinking at the "higher level" is not
"expert level" thinking. The levels of thinking are, rather,
interdependent. We often describe "knowledge" and
"comprehension" as "rote" knowledge. I would argue
that "rote" memorization is not really knowledge at all. It is,
rather, the development of reflex. We have confused, therefore, the
cognitive domain with the psychomotor domain. I prefer the think of
increases in the levels as a "completing" or a "rounding
out" knowledge.
What
are the implications of this on classroom instruction? Well, we will try
to continue to work that out in ongoing posts...
References
Bereiter,
C., & Scardamalia, M. (1998). Beyond Bloom's Taxonomy: Rethinking knowledge
for the knowledge age. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullen, &
D. Hopkins (Eds.), International handbook of education change. Boston, MA:
Kluwer Academic.
Hirsch,
E.D. (2006). The knowledge deficit: Closing the shocking education gap for
American children. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Moore,
D.S. (1982). Reconsidering Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives,
cognitive domain. Educational Theory, 32(1), 29-34.
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