1. Bloom’s Taxonomy: Its Potential & Limitations Ana Serrano & Jackie Dewar LMU Center for Teaching Excellence April 25, 2007

2. What is Bloom’s Taxonomy? A hierarchical classification system for levels of intellectual behavior and educational goals An indispensable resource when designing courses or lessons A system to align curriculum and evaluation with precision A useful tool for analyzing questions

3. BLOOM’S TAXONOMY Original (1956) Revised (2001) Bloom & Krathwohl Anderson & Krathwohl http://www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/bloom.htm

4. HISTORY Curriculum emerges as a field of study toward the close of the 19th century APA 1948 BLOOM AND EDUCATORS TOOK ON TASK TO CLASSIFY OBJECTIVES:Cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains RALPH TYLER, 1949-Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction IN 1956 BLOOM PUBLISHED HANDBOOK CALLED: TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES (COGNITIVE DOMAIN).

5. Current Usage Course and lesson design –Writing learning goals and objectives –Consider levels of thinking –Determine alignment of objectives, activities and assessments Analyzing questions –Aligning objectives, tasks and assessments Resource: Richlin (2006) Blueprint for Learning

6. Your Disciplinary Perspective TASK: Discuss the potential & limitations of Bloom’s Taxonomy in your field. Use the post-it paper to record points of agreement.

7. Critique of BT: Positives and Negatives Identifies great potential for objectives Examine Curriculum alignment Differentiate activities from objectives Useful for test development Does not address questions of values in education Focus on change in behavior rather than transformation Overlap between and within categories