Benjamin Bloom developed ataxonomyor classification of educational objectives. These objectives were divided into three domains:cognitive, affective, and psychom*otor.In real life behavior from all three domains occurs simultaneously. For example, when students arewriting (psychom*otor), they are alsoremembering or recalling (cognitive), and they are likely to have someemotions or feelings (affection)towards the task.
Important Points
The Cognitive Domain:
- It is also known as the thinking domain.
- Initially, the six basic objectives in Bloom’staxonomyareknowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
1.Knowledge
- Knowledge is defined as the remembering of previously learned material.
- This may involve the recall of a wide range of material, from specific facts to complete theories, but all that is required is bringing to mind the appropriate information.
- Knowledge represents the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain.
2. Comprehension
- Comprehension is defined as the ability to grasp the meaning of the material.
- This may be shown by translating material from one form to another word to numbers, by interpreting material explaining or summarizing, and by estimating future trends predicting consequences or effects.
- These learning outcomes go one step beyond the simple remembering of material and represent the lowest level of understanding.
3. Application
- Application refers to the ability to use learned material in new and concrete situations.
- This may include the application of such things as rules, methods, concepts, principles, laws, and theories.
- Learning outcomes in this area require a higher level of understanding than those under comprehension.
4. Analysis
- Analysis refers to the ability to break down the material into its component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood.
- This may include the identification of parts, analysis of the relationship between parts, and recognition of the organizational principles involved.
- Learning outcomes here represent a higher intellectual level than comprehension and application because they require an understanding of both the content and the structural form of the material.
5. Synthesis
- Synthesis refers to the ability to put parts together to form a new whole.
- This may involve the production of a unique communication theme or speech, a plan of the operations research proposal, or a set of abstract relations schemes for classifying information.
- Learning outcomes in this area stress creative behaviors, with major emphasis on the formulation of new patterns or structures.
6. Evaluation
- Evaluation is concerned with the ability to judge the value of material for a given purpose.
- The judgments are to be based on definite criteria.
- These may be internal criteria organizationor external criteria and the student may determine the criteria or be given them.
- Learning outcomes in this area are highest in the cognitive hierarchy because they contain elements of all the other categories, plus conscious value judgments based on clearly defined criteria.
Key Points
- These objectives are considered as a hierarchy, each skill building on those below, but this is not entirely accurate.
- In 2001, a group of educational researchers published the first major revision of the cognitivetaxonomy. These are Remembering,Understanding,Applying,Analyzing,Evaluating,Creating
- Remembering, understanding, and applying⇒thelower-level objectives.
- Analyzing, evaluating, and creating are considered ⇒high-level objectives.
- The six processes of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating acting on four kinds of knowledge—factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive.
Therefore, Evaluatingis the highest level of Cognitive ability.