Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist known for his research on defining the levels of cognitive processes. Bloom’s Taxonomy highlights six levels of thinking ranging from the lowest level of remembering to the highest, more complex process of creating. The video below offers clear examples of each level and discusses the importance of aligning your teaching practices and assessment expectations.
It’s important to consider these dimensions of student performance when outlining the learning objectives for your assignments. Objectives should state what you want your students to be able to do. The language used to describe your objective defines the type of cognitive process that you want the student to use to demonstrate their learning.
Examples, with the cognitive processes in bold and the subject matter content in italics:
- The student will learn to categorize rational and irrational numbers.
- The student will learn to distinguish among confederal, federal, and unitary systems of government.
- The student will be able to design an experiment to test a hypothesis.
As you consider the learning objectives for your course and assignments, you want may to review this list of active learning verbs for each of the six dimensions of Bloom’s Taxonomy.