Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Bloom's Taxonomy is an educational classic. Its formal title is Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. A committee of college and university examiners wrote the book, which was edited by Benjamin S. Bloom and published in 1956. Bloom's Taxonomy offered a classification system for educational goals that could be used in the construction of test items and in the formulation of instructional objectives.

The volume presents six categories of educational objectives:

• 1.
  Knowledge
• 2.
  Comprehension
• 3.
  Application
• 4.
  Analysis
• 5.
  Synthesis
• 6.
  Evaluation

Bloom presents sample test items that assess instructional objectives associated with each category of educational objectives along with specific examples of instructional objectives associated with each of the six categories of cognitive objectives.

To Bloom, knowledge is defined as ‘those behaviors and test situations, which emphasize the remembering, either by recognition or recall, of ideas, material, or phenomena’ (Bloom, 1956, p. 62). Recognition test items tend to be easier than comparable recall test items, because recognition test items tend to provide incorrect answers along with correct answers (e.g., as with multiple-choice test items). Recall items tend not to provide any answers at all, as the test-taker provides the correct answers to the items.

Bloom clearly acknowledged various forms of knowledge that varied in level of abstractness, from concrete facts to theories and abstract structures. First, there is knowledge of specifics, including terminology and specific facts. Second, there is knowledge of ways and means of dealing with specifics, including conventions, trends and sequences, classifications and categories, criteria, and methodology, Third, there is knowledge of the universals and abstractions in a field, including (a) principles and generalizations and (b) theories and structures. An example of a knowledge objective is ‘to know the state where New York City is located.’

The second category of educational objectives is comprehension, which comprises three types of behavior. The first type is translation, which means to transform a communication that is in one form (e.g., a statement in a language, such as English) into a comparable communication that is in another form (e.g., an equivalent statement in a language, such as Spanish). An example of a translation objective is ‘to graph on graph paper the equation x2+ y 2=9.’ The second type of comprehension behavior is interpretation, which means to formulate a restatement of a communication into another communication. An example of an interpretation objective is ‘to summarize a short story.’ The third type of comprehension behavior is extrapolation, which means to make a prediction or to infer an implication or a consequence from a consideration of some statement or communication. An example of an extrapolation objective is ‘to predict the consequences of implementing a policy of free college tuition for all legal residents.’

The third category of educational objectives is application. Application refers to using a rule, a principle, or a concept to solve a problem. An example of an application objective is ‘to solve a distance problem with the use of the Pythagorean theorem.’

The fourth category of educational objectives is analysis. To Bloom, analysis is ‘the breakdown of the material into its constituent parts and detection of the relationships of the parts and of the way they are organized’ (Bloom, 1956, p. 144). There are three types of analysis behaviors. The first type is the analysis of elements, which refers to breaking down a communication into its constituent parts and identifying the elements of the communication. The second type is the analysis of relationships, which refers to determining the relationships among the elements in a communication. The third type is the analysis of organizational elements, which refers to inferring the organizational principles underlying a communication (e.g., the author's purpose, point of view, or attitude). [Page 111]An example of an analysis objective is ‘to infer the view of technology of Mary Shelley in her classic novel Frankenstein.’

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