Unlearning and Relearning Bloom's Taxonomy - Part 2
The most MISUNDERSTOOD and MISUSED framework in the whole education !!!
If you haven’t gone through the first part, here’s the link:
So what’s the big fuss about the pyramid?
I came across this guest blog post by Lorin W. Anderson (one of the authors of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy) as I was researching on this infamous pyramid.
Anderson also shares his utter disappointment,
“After 40+ years in the business, I am greatly dismayed that many educators get their information from oral presentations and secondary (and in some cases tertiary) sources. This practice tends to result in passing along half-truths and misinterpretations.”
Anderson’s dismay resonates with Benjamin Bloom’s earlier concern too. He had said that the original book published in 1950s was "one of the most widely cited yet least read books in American education" (Anderson and Sosniak, 19941).
Oh OH !!!
I’m 100% guilty. I had never read the book either.
I first came across the pyramid of Bloom’s Taxonomy during my M.Ed. class at Kathmandu University, School of Education. I remember being fascinated with the whole concept and the six hierarchical levels. It looked so natural, so intuitive, so meaningful.
Once you saw it, you could not unsee it. Then it came popping up every where. In workshops, seminars, conferences I attended here and abroad, in webinars, and in curriculum development courses.
Likewise, I started talking about it in terms of LOTs and HOTs. The bottom two levels, Remember and Understand, the as Lower Order Thinking skills. While the upper levels of Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create as Higher Order Thinking skills.
Naturally, we - teachers, students, parents - all want the HOTs, not the LOTs.
I also started sharing these ideas of learning hierarchies, levels, HOTs and LOTs in the teacher workshops that we conducted.
And, even started preaching, like a blind follower, about why teachers should focus on the HOTs rather than on the LOTs.
Everything went smooth like butter.
My Initial Fascination with Bloom’s Taxonomy:
Mainly for three reasons.
First, this pyramid was a constant staple in almost all programs. It was treated as if it came down straight from the gods, thus unquestionable. So this must be true, I thought.
Second, for me and for almost all the teachers, it did make sense. A simple looking pyramid with 6 distinct levels, with HOTs and LOTs. Easy to remember, easy to talk about, and easy to use. Also, quite easy to present in the slideshows.
Third, many educators started to promote the ideas of creativity as the most important skills. (This could be true.) If creativity is the learning objective, why not focus on the upper levels of the pyramid? Why waste time in the boring bottom levels? (This made sense back then.) Because, most of what seemed to happen in the bottom levels was simply remembering (memorization).
The pyramid had all the answers to achieve this, so I thought.
My Unlearning Moment:
Soon, I also started noticing something interesting, something absurd, something counter-intuitive.
Well-intentioned but fluffy quotes like, “Imagination is greater than knowledge”, “You can just google it”, and “Don’t teach your students what, teach your students how and why” seemed to diminish the value of teaching/learning/building the knowledge part.
Focusing on teaching knowledge meant depriving students to be creative, imaginative, so is the popular discourse. Teaching knowledge is portrayed as anti-construstivist. Therefore, a teacher’s job is to skip the boring bottom levels and start facilitating. Create environment and give students opportunities to sharpen their skills to analyze, evaluate, and create.
I was almost sliding towards this fluffy belief that building knowledge was redundant (because one can just google it and thus not necessary to teach them). And that teachers should focus on the HOTs rather than on the LOTs.
However, I soon started to realize this discourse in education was becoming a bit tiresome and illogical, especially around the idea of which one is important: knowledge or imagination?
My unlearning moment came with this simple question:
Can one imagine without prior knowledge?
This question pushed me into the rabbit hole of education philosophy, psychology, learning science, and cognitive psychology.
Along the way, these three books help me drag myself out of the Bloom’s Taxonomy Echo Chamber.
Why Don't Students Like School? by Dan Willingham
Urban Myths about Learning and Education by Pedro De Bruyckere
I want to share two quotes by cognitive scientist Dan Willingham that smashed my blind adherence to the Bloom’s taxonomy, the levels, the pyramid, HOTs, LOTs, and everything fluffy around it.
“There is no doubt that having students memorize lists of dry facts is not enriching. But it is also true that trying to teach students skills (analysis or synthesis) in the absence of factual knowledge is impossible.”
“The very processes that teachers care about most - critical thinking and problem solving - are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment).”
It seems LOTs is more important than HOTs. Because without strong foundation of LOTs, you can not just activate HOTs.
Imagination, Creativity, Critical Thinking and all the HOTs are built upon the strong foundation of memory, knowledge, and understanding. Skipping the knowledge building part would be like trying to install roofs on the house without the walls or foundations.
Like I said, this whole narrative around how to teach “creativity/critical thinking” was/is getting annoying.
The people who extolled “creativity/critical thinking” were also the same people who talked profusely about Bloom’s Taxonomy (the Cognitive domain) and HOTs/LOTs.
Trust me, I still believe that Bloom’s Taxonomy is a super helpful tool for teachers, trainers, course developers, instructors, curriculum designers, and evaluators.
But it’s frustrating that most teachers and educators are unwilling to take a critical look at it and question its pervasiveness. Especially, the blind faith in the pyramid and the six levels.
And it’s frustrating to hear on the insistence on HOTs and LOTs, and the emphasis on the illogical narrative: teachers should focus more on the higher order thinking because that leads to gaining the 21st century skills.
So how do we remove the fluff?
There’s a key element missing in the pyramid. Without which, like Anderson said, the use of taxonomy is inaccurate and misguided. When we see what the revised Bloom’s taxonomy is all about, hopefully, we can do away with the fluff around it.
In the final part of this post, I will write about what exactly is in the revised Bloom’s taxonomy, the half-truth part, and how to use the taxonomy to map out learning objectives and outcomes.
Till then, why don’t you share this post so that more and more teachers/educators understand the core logic of the taxonomy and dispel any half-truths and misinterpretations.