Education is the process through which training or learning is provided to one or more people with the purpose of developing, training and optimizing their cognitive, affective, social and moral capacities.
Education is an essential element when it comes to generating a common context and learning the different skills necessary to adapt to the environment and be able to perform different functions, something that has worried humanity since ancient times.
Although access to formal education has not been mandatory and accessible to everyone until relatively recently, different models or attempts have been carried out to assess what formal learning is intended to achieve or what objectives it has. One of these models is Bloom’s taxonomy which we are going to talk about throughout this article.
Bloom’s taxonomy is a classification of different objectives to be achieved through formal education by Benjamin Bloom based on the three aspects that different educational experts had reflected in 1948 when trying to establish a consensus regarding the objectives of education: cognition, affectivity and psychomotor skills.
It is a classification of objectives carried out in a hierarchical manner, organized based on whether the activity requires more or less complex processing. The author started his classification from the contributions of behaviorism and cognitivism prevailing at the time.
This taxonomy has been used and valued in the world of education since its conception. In itself, although Bloom’s taxonomy is based on the consideration of the three major aspects and these are analyzed and classified, tends to focus especially on the cognitive aspect this taxonomy being finalized in 1956. Regarding the classification of objectives and the dimensions worked on in each of the aspects, in the taxonomy we can find the following.
The aspect on which perhaps the greatest emphasis has been placed throughout the history of education, and on which Bloom’s taxonomy also focuses especially, is the cognitive sphere.
In her, The aim is to enhance the student’s competence in the achievement or achievement of certain cognitive abilities or objectives (specifically six) based on different intellectual, affective and psychomotor abilities. Although within each of them there can be different actions and aspects to work on, as a summary we can consider that the main objectives of education according to Bloom’s taxonomy are the following.
1. Knowledge
Although the concept of knowledge may seem very broad, in this taxonomy it is indicated as such as the ability to remember what was previously acquired in a more or less approximate way. It is considered the most basic of capabilities that the student must acquire and the one that requires the least processing.
2. Understanding
Acquiring and keeping recorded what we have learned does not require great processing, but per se it does not help us adapt to the environment. It is necessary that we understand what we learned. Thus, a second objective is to be able to transform the information as it comes to us into something we can come to understand and interpret.
3. Application
A more complex step is the application. At this moment the subject must not only capture and understand what is being said but also be able to use it. Knowing and understanding what multiplication is is not the same as doing it practically and when it is needed.
The analysis of information means being able to abstract the knowledge obtained in previous moments, requiring the ability to fragment the reality of what was learned in order to distinguish what makes it up and allow its application in different areas.
It can reach develop hypotheses and contrast them based on the information provided Continuing with the multiplication example above, we would be able to understand that we can perform multiplication in a given problem and why it is correct. Requires high processing.
5. Synthesis
Synthesizing means creating a model in summary, combining the information received to create something different from what was learned (in fact, in later revisions, synthesis is changed to creation). It is one of the most complex cognitive objectives, since It means not only working with the information learned but also incorporate other elements that help us obtain its base and apply it to create.
6. Evaluation
This element mainly involves being able to make judgments based on reasoned criteria or opinion. It can even mean non-acceptance of what is being taught requiring a very advanced level of mental elaboration to do so.
Reviewing this educational proposal
Although Bloom’s taxonomy has been a reference in the world of education since its conception, this does not imply that different authors have not made any modifications in this regard. Specifically, the one published in 2001 by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, who were students of the original author, stands out.
In this change, it was proposed that instead of using nouns to evaluate each of the key categories or objectives, verbs would be used, something that facilitates the understanding that the objective is the fact of doing a certain action and not its result itself. It is emphasized that we are facing an event that requires an active and makes the student the protagonist of his own learning process
The sequencing of categories was also modified, considering the fact of evaluating a higher order thought but below the creation process (in the original model evaluation was considered more superior to synthesis/creation).
Likewise, the model has subsequently been expanded including different aspects linked to the use of new information technologies and communication, assimilating to other models.
