Critical thinking and Information Literacy: Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking go hand in hand.  Bloom's taxonomy takes students through a thought process of analyzing information or knowledge critically.  Bloom's taxonomy begins with knowledge/memory and slowly pushes students to seek more information based upon a series of levels of questions and keywords that brings out an action on the part of the student.  Both critical thinking and Bloom's taxonomy are necessary to education and meta-cognition. 

Practical Applications:

• The Idea of “dialogue” with a “text” and on of  filling gaps or silences in the what you are  reading in order  so that you can contribute to any conversation, in particular when writing a research paper is primordial.
• Teaching students extrapolation- The concept that they are in charge of answering their own questions. "effects" of something must be determined by my own findings!
• The more “content” background knowledge we have the more critical our engagement.

Why Use Bloom's Taxonomy?

Source below Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching- Patricia Armstrong- Bloom's Taxonomy

1. Objectives (learning goals) are important to establish in a pedagogical interchange so that teachers and students alike understand the purpose of that interchange.
2. Teachers can benefit from using frameworks to organize objectives because
3. Organizing objectives helps to clarify objectives for themselves and for students.
4. Having an organized set of objectives helps teachers to:
   • “plan and deliver appropriate instruction”;
   • “design valid assessment tasks and strategies”; and
   • “ensure that instruction and assessment are aligned with the objectives.”

See also, Anderson, Lorin W., et al. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing : A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives / Editors, Lorin W. Anderson, David Krathwohl ; Contributors, Peter W. Airasian ... [et Al.]. Complete ed., Longman, 2001.

Source below Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching- Patricia Armstrong- Bloom's Taxonomy

• Remember
  • Recognizing
  • Recalling
• Understand
  • Interpreting
  • Exemplifying
  • Classifying
  • Summarizing
  • Inferring
  • Comparing
  • Explaining
• Apply
  • Executing
  • Implementing
• Analyze
  • Differentiating
  • Organizing
  • Attributing
• Evaluate
  • Checking
  • Critiquing
• Create
  • Generating
  • Planning
  • Producing

"In the revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of these six cognitive processes, but its authors created a separate taxonomy of the types of knowledge used in cognition: Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching- Patricia Armstrong- Bloom's Taxonomy

• Factual Knowledge
  • Knowledge of terminology
  • Knowledge of specific details and elements
• Conceptual Knowledge
  • Knowledge of classifications and categories
  • Knowledge of principles and generalizations
  • Knowledge of theories, models, and structures
• Procedural Knowledge
  • Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms
  • Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods
  • Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures
• Metacognitive Knowledge
  • Strategic Knowledge
  • Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge
  • Self-knowledge

Image source: Google Images Search: WellsAcademicSolutions-

In Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956), Bloom outlined  six hierarchical and interconnected:

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

Here is an example of Bloom's Taxonomy in use: