In 1948 a group of university examiners wanted to save themselves work. Their dull-sounding classification became one of the most famous diagrams in education.
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Ten items. Say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Read the sentence, guess the meaning of the word in bold, then reveal.
The three words are: evaluate · apply · memorise. Read each meaning, say the word, then reveal.
One missing word fits every phrase in the group. Say it, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, answer the quick check from memory, then discuss one question.
In 1948, at a convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston, a small group of college examiners met informally. Their problem was practical. Every year their universities set long comprehensive exams, and every year writing them took an enormous amount of work.
One of them was Benjamin Bloom, associate director of the Board of Examinations at the University of Chicago. His idea was simple: if test questions could be classified by the kind of thinking they required, universities could share their banks of questions instead of each writing them from scratch.
The group met about twice a year. In 1956 it published Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. It sorted thinking into six levels, from the simplest to the most complex: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.
1. What practical problem did the examiners have?
2. What did Bloom hope universities could share?
3. What were the six original levels?
1. Writing their long annual exams took an enormous amount of work.
2. Their banks of test questions.
3. Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation.
At first, hardly anyone noticed. “Taxonomy” was an unfamiliar word, and the book was written for examiners rather than for classroom teachers. But over the following decades it spread, and it was eventually translated into 22 languages.
When researchers used the framework to analyse real courses and tests, the results were uncomfortable. The questions were weighted heavily towards the bottom level: recognising and recalling information. The framework made it easy to see what was missing — the levels where students apply, analyse and judge.
In 2001 a team led by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, who had worked on the original handbook, published a revision. The levels became verbs — Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate, Create — and the top two changed places: Synthesis, renamed Create, moved above Evaluate. The revision also relaxed the idea of a strict ladder: the levels were allowed to overlap.
1. Why did the book get little attention at first?
2. What did analyses of real tests show?
3. Name two changes in the 2001 revision.
1. “Taxonomy” was an unfamiliar word, and the book was written for examiners.
2. Most questions only asked students to recognise or recall information.
3. Any two: the levels became verbs; Synthesis became Create and moved to the top, above Evaluate; the strict hierarchy was relaxed.
Bloom's taxonomy, usually drawn as a pyramid, is now part of teacher training in many countries, and teachers use its verbs — explain, compare, judge, design — to write lesson aims. But it can have a side effect. If remembering is the “lowest” level, it can start to look unimportant.
In 2016 the biologist Susan Lawler, of La Trobe University in Australia, described what had happened in her own field. Teaching students to identify plants and animals had been dropped from courses as too simplistic — the bottom of the pyramid. “The problem is that identifying a plant or insect is not simple at all,” she wrote. To name an insect correctly, you need to know what a mandible, a maxilla and a rostrum are. Meanwhile, people from industry were complaining that graduates couldn't identify common plants and animals.
Her argument was that the higher levels depend on the lower ones: you cannot analyse, evaluate or create in a subject you know nothing about. The pyramid is a way of seeing different kinds of thinking — not a reason to stop remembering.
1. What do teachers use Bloom's verbs for?
2. Why had identification been dropped from Lawler's courses?
3. Why, according to Lawler, is identification not simple?
1. To write lesson aims.
2. Because it was seen as too simplistic — the bottom level of the pyramid.
3. Because it needs a lot of detailed knowledge — for example, what a mandible, a maxilla or a rostrum is.
Six levels of thinking, from the simplest at the bottom to the most complex at the top (the 2001 version). Each level has its own verbs — which makes it easy to check what a question really asks.
A teacher has written six questions about a short story. Which level of the 2001 taxonomy does each one mainly ask for?
1. Create — producing something new.
2. Remember — recalling a fact from the text.
3. Understand — explaining the meaning shows understanding.
4. Evaluate — making a judgement and supporting it.
5. Analyse — breaking the text into parts and seeing how they connect.
6. Apply — using an idea in a new, real situation.
Verbs aren't levels. “Explain” can be pure memory if the explanation was learnt by heart.
It can make knowledge look cheap. The bottom of the pyramid is the foundation, not the least important part.
Thinking isn't a ladder. Real tasks mix levels; even the 2001 revision relaxed the strict order.
Bloom's bottom level is full of questions like Who wrote it? and What did they write? They look similar, but one uses did and the other doesn't. It depends on whether the question word is the subject or the object.
Write a question for the bold answer. Decide whether you need did.
1. Our teacher marked the tests last night. → Who ?
2. The new manager changed the whole timetable. → What ?
3. A burst pipe flooded the exam hall. → What ?
4. She asked her colleague for help. → Who ?
5. The students chose the second topic. → Which topic ?
1. …marked the tests last night? (subject)
2. …did the new manager change? (object)
3. …flooded the exam hall? (subject)
4. …did she ask for help? (object)
5. …did the students choose? (object)
Three questions have a mistake with did; one is correct. Write the correct version.
1. Who did invent the telephone? →
2. What you remembered from the lecture? →
3. Who did you sit next to in the exam? →
4. How many students did pass the test? →
1. Who invented the telephone?
2. What did you remember from the lecture?
3. Correct — you is the subject and who is the object, so did is needed.
4. How many students passed the test?
Now write two questions about this lesson for your teacher — one subject question and one object question — and say which level of the pyramid each one tests.
Climb the pyramid out loud. Choose a task, start the timer, and talk.
Choose a film, book or news story everyone knows. Ask one question at each level of the pyramid, from Remember to Create.
Describe a test that only asked you to remember, and one that made you really think. Which did you learn more from?
Argue that knowing facts is as important as creative thinking. Use an example from your job or studies.