Curriculum Development Report
Introducing Bloom
Have you ever felt that you understood separate aspects of a topic but that connecting the information was rather difficult? One of our primary goals at CCNH is to help you, the student, learn how to educate other people. Therefore, one of our challenges is to create courses that not only teach you the facts, but also help you assemble the pieces you need to convey that information to others. To help in this effort, we have enlisted Bloom and his taxonomy, which was developed about 50 years ago by the psychologist B. S. Bloom and some of his colleagues. Bloom’s taxonomy (as cited in Clark, 2001) divides the development of intellectual skills into six levels that progress from basic to complex:
- Knowledge — stating the facts;
- Comprehension — understanding meaning;
- Application — applying the material to specific situations;
- Analysis — dividing a complex idea into its various parts — with understanding;
- Synthesis — using the parts to make something new; and
- Evaluation — making judgments based on specific criteria and explaining the reasons why.
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When you think about taking tests and exams you may envision answering the types of questions that would be found at the knowledge — or first — level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Our goal is to also include some advanced questions so that you will have the opportunity to practice applying what you have learned and making other kinds of high–level connections, ultimately becoming better prepared to educate your clients.
For some of the projects that are assigned in CCNH courses, you are asked to create client handouts in which you must assemble material from more than one source.
These projects are examples of the synthesis, or fifth level, question or problem. In addition, you may sometimes encounter exam questions that ask you to compare and contrast ideas from two or more authors. These are evaluation, or sixth level, questions.
While we will always include plenty of knowledge based questions in our tests and exams, we also seek to include questions that demonstrate you have mastered all the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. This may be especially helpful after graduation, if you take one of the national board examinations offered by one of CCNH’s affiliate organizations. It is not unusual for questions on these professional exams to conform to Bloom’s taxonomy.
Krista Leamon
Learning Domains or Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001, July 5). Retrieved July 14, 2006 from www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
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