Gazi Md. Abdur Rashid :
Blooms Taxonomy is regarded as a comprehensive platform where the learning objectives and its outcomes are classified in a systematic way. This model is used effectively for teaching and learning purposes. Blooms Taxonomy can be defined as a methodical classification of cognitive skills (as educational learning objectives) to help teachers teach and assess student capabilities better while helping students study well. The reason for developing Blooms Taxonomy was to provide teachers a common language to converse and exchange learning and evaluation techniques. The ultimate goal of a teacher who uses Blooms taxonomy will be to promote higher-order thought among the learners by pushing up from lower-order cognitive skills.
Levels of Blooms Taxonomy
Knowledge (Remember): This is the bottom-most but highly relevant level in Blooms Taxonomy. The level involves identifying or recalling facts, basic concepts, terms, or answers without essentially being aware of exactly what they mean. The characteristics may include terminology, specific facts, trends and sequences, principles and generalizations.
Comprehension (Understand): This level of Blooms Taxonomy is in fact progression from the previous stage (Knowledge) in which information can be interpreted with more readiness. This stage is more about identifying the differences and similarities while making comparisons.
Application: The third but one of the important levels of Blooms Taxonomy is Application which needs a different sort of thinking from the learners. This stage demands learners to make use of the pre-learned information in a somewhat diverse way. This stage will be a success if they can apply the learning in a diverse range of novel circumstances and yield the expected outcome.
Analysis: This is a key stage where learners have to fall back on what they learned in the first stage of blooms taxonomy and retrieve user information. The information in the repository needs to be broken down after having a deeper look at it. The characteristics include analysis of elements, relationships and organization.
Synthesis: This stage is about using the information to go an extra step in the progression. This is to insist learners bring in some initiatives and apply novel ideas as a means to problem-solving. This stage demands good planning through which broken pieces of information are put together to get the best results.
Evaluation: The final phase of Blooms taxonomy is the evaluation of all the learning you had. This involves considering different people’s ideas, criticizing them and at the same time evaluating your personal perspectives.
Creation: This level was added in the revised Taxonomy that came out in 2001. It involves coming up with the solution for old problems by addressing the flaws or failures of the previous case. What makes Blooms finding really special is the way it helps teachers to reflect their teaching and importantly on the consequent learning and understanding of the students. In addition, it could be applied to nearly everything in a learning scenario.
Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Classroom-Blooms Taxonomy is an influential platform for learning and teaching that lets you shape almost anything that is part of your classroom. Here let us have a look at the number of ways a teacher can use this platform.
o Summarize a reading passage
o Refine and enhance queries
o Map curriculum
o Assess the champ in a debate
o Assist students to develop reading response prompts
o Brainstorm ideas for project-based learning
o Design or enhance an assessment (formative/summative)
o Offer learning feedback
o Visualize progress of student over the course
o Direct research projects
o Develop question stems
o Differentiate instruction
o Learning reflection journals
o Frame a micro-lesson
Developing learning objectives is the key goal of using Blooms Taxonomy. A wise teacher can make the best out of this comprehensive theory and cultivate highly valued qualities in his or her students. It is explained in a simple way by telling how remembering a concept is the key before understanding it and how understanding it is the key before you can apply it. Similarly, a thorough analysis is necessary before you can initiate an evaluation process and how a thorough evaluation is critical before you create an accurate conclusion. The taxonomy from Benjamin was purely one-dimensional and the ultimate focus was particularly on the knowledge domain but it was way ahead of the time.
(Gazi Md. Abdur Rashid, Research Officer, District Education Office, Secondary and Higher Education, Munshiganj)
