Book Review

Anderson, L.W. & Sosniak, L.A. (eds) (1994) Bloom's Taxonomy: A Forty-year Retrospective. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education. 214pp.

As is repeatedly noted throughout this retrospective, the original Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain has become a classic that has been cited by most subsequent books on education. Over the past decade or two it has become for numerous teachers the starting point for their attempts to provide a differentiated curriculum in mixed ability classes, though few will have read the original. It is not something I had been drawn back to, either, after my cursory reading of it in the 1970s, despite my peddling of the taxonomy's six levels as a simplistic recipe ('add content and stir') for planning units that offered variety and degrees of difficulty. In retrospect, this failure to return to the original, rather than relying on the secondary sources, albeit often very productive 'translators' of it, was a shortcoming on my part, but one partly remedied by reading the 1994 book that is the subject of this review.

However, this is not so much a review of the book as a response to some of its content. In large part the Forty-year Retrospective provides confirmation of the existence of a number of common sense assumptions about the nature and value of the Taxonomy - eg its value in avoiding too heavy a reliance on learning as memorisation, its suggestion of a hierarchy from simple mental processes to more complex higher order thinking, its change of emphasis from teachers' actions to students' learning. What was more important for me was what this book's various contributors said that challenged the relaxed and comfortable version of the Taxonomy that an anthropologist might infer from time spent in Australian schools.

I have always had misgivings about the 'knowledge' level being portrayed as simple or lower order, perhaps because of my struggle to 'know' some of life's more challenging concepts, principles and theories. In fact the Taxonomy recognises that knowledge varies from the specific and relatively concrete to the more complex and abstract - and within-level differences are significant for the other categories, too. Furthermore, the more complex tasks associated with one level will often be more difficult than the more simple ones at the next higher level (p.192), so this needs to be taken into account when a teacher is planning a unit or lesson. Learning contracts that leave the choice of activities almost entirely to the students may allow some talented students to avoid the more demanding tasks while still choosing from within the designated higher order levels.

Another consideration that should not be overlooked is that learners' actual behaviours or learning 'may differ in degree as well as kind' (p.14) from that intended by the teacher. That is, planning what seems an analysis activity is not sufficient in itself to guarantee that students will use analysis-level thinking in their responses. It is also reiterated throughout this book that for accurate classification of any task it is necessary to know or assume the individuals' prior educational experiences - eg an analysis task for one student may be a knowledge or comprehension task for another student who has already learned the 'right' or 'best' answer, whether from the teacher or from other prior learning. Indeed, expertise is defined largely in terms of the extent of the expert's knowledge base, eg:

In addition to (a) the automaticity of their behavior, experts (b) have acquired more knowledge than novices, (c) have organized their knowledge differently, and (d) have more detailed and precise knowledge. (pp.49-50)

A number of the contributors to this book question the assumption that the six levels constitute a linear hierarchy. One suggestion is that two branches may occur after comprehension, an application-synthesis branch and an analysis branch (p.73), though such alternative structures remain tentative. Whatever the case, we should remember Gerard's warning:

Making categories is man's great intellectual strength and weakness: strength, since only by dividing the world into categories can he reason with it; weakness, since he then takes the categories seriously. (p.78)

Where to draw the line between 'lower order' and 'higher order' thinking is also seen as problematic, despite the ready assumption in most advice to teachers that analysis, synthesis and evaluation are the higher order levels. Lorin Anderson's chapter, 'Research on Teaching and Teacher Education', discusses this in concise detail. Some writers have argued that the boundary between lower- and higher-order processes occurs within the comprehension level (Hegarty) or within the application level (Mevarech and Werner), hence presumably the suggestion in one source that there should be three broad categories: (1) knowledge; (2) comprehension and routine, well-practised application; and (3) nonroutine application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation (p.127).

That no definitive answer is provided here should not be a cause for concern, for the important message for educators is that within-level variation should be considered when planning activities or questions on the basis of the taxonomy. For example, when planning comprehension tasks we might take into account the Taxonomy's distinction between comprehension as translation, as interpretation and as extrapolation. My attempt to illustrate this, using The Three Bears, produced the following examples:

Comprehension as translation
Explain in your own words why Goldilocks jumped out of the window and ran away when the bears found her in their house.

Comprehension as interpretation
What had Goldilocks done to Baby Bear's things that he might not like?

Comprehension as extrapolation
Do you think Goldilocks will come back to the bears' house another day?

In practice, all three of these might best be combined into the one set of comprehension questions and perhaps also linked to activities from higher levels of the Taxonomy, as is discussed below.

On teachers' use of the Taxonomy one thought-provoking paragraph from Anderson is worth quoting in full:

With respect to lesson planning, a great deal of evidence leads to the conclusion that teachers begin their lesson planning with classroom activities (ie, what they want their students to do), rather than with learning objectives (ie, what they want their students to learn). From a teacher's perspective, classroom activities may be more important than objectives. They are concrete, under teacher control, and keep students busy (therefore serving a classroom management function). In contrast, learning objectives are abstract and under student control. In addition, the implementation of objectives-based planning may result in problems of classroom management because some students achieve objectives faster than others. (p.138)

Teachers may well profit from reflecting upon the extent to which their concerns about classroom management limit their application of the Taxonomy to their own teaching, eg whether, and how, they use learning contracts; the amount and form of choice allowed to their students; the extent to which students are encouraged or required to elaborate and defend their conclusions or points of view.

Given the assumed purpose of those using the Taxonomy as a unit or lesson planning device, namely to encourage higher order as well as lower order thinking, it is worth asking whether this may be undermined by directing students to complete numerous separate activities, each designated as representing a single level of the Taxonomy. Anderson cites an example from the Mississippi Department of Education where teachers are encouraged to incorporate several levels within the one task:

Plan a science experience where children will predict something, observe or test it, then draw conclusions. Use at least three of Bloom's levels. Make notes of the children's reactions. (p.138)

This may be the book's most immediately useful idea for teachers, so I offer the following examples of how it may be applied, using Merydyth Raue's upper primary unit, 'Carmen Sandiego', from the recent (1997) TalentEd publication, Enrichment Units for Primary Classes. Tasks (from which the students were to choose fifteen to complete, the only other specification being that at least four were from the Knowledge/ Comprehension level) included:

Knowledge and comprehension

1. Find out about fingerprints and how they are used in crime fighting.

6. Find the language/s (other than English) spoken in six different countries.

Analysis

3. Compare your fingerprints with one or two friends. What similarities and differences can you see?

5. What would be the advantages and disadvantages if everyone in the world spoke the same language?

Synthesis

4. Write a spy cartoon strip using fingerprint characters.

Evaluation

3. If everyone in the world decided to speak the same language and use the same currency, which language and currency should we all use? Give reasons for your choice.

If using the multi-level approach, tasks such as the following may be generated:

 

Find out about fingerprints and how they are used in crime fighting. Compare your fingerprints with those of one or two friends. What similarities and differences can you see? Write a spy cartoon strip using fingerprint characters. (Knowledge/ comprehension, analysis, synthesis)

Find the language/s (other than English) spoken in six different countries. What would be the advantages and disadvantages if everyone in the world spoke the same language? If everyone in the world decided to speak the same language and use the same currency, which language and currency should we all use? Give reasons for your choice. (Knowledge/comprehension, analysis, evaluation)

These may encourage greater depth and coherence while still allowing for differentiation, in that the talented students could be expected to demonstrate more complexity and precision in their responses. At the very least it should help students to develop a more integrated understanding of the particular content being addressed, as well as of the learning process itself.

This is not a 'how to do it' book, nor necessarily one that teachers will find appealing reading, but it does invite the reader to think beyond a superficial application of the Taxonomy in curriculum planning and the evaluation of student learning. It does underline the value in revisiting the original 1956 publication, as I intend to now.

Stan Bailey
UNE, Armidale  

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