Understand the fundamental role Bloom’s Taxonomy plays in most of the assessment experiences learners have in school (and beyond …)

Bloom’s Taxonomy and Assessment

Our concern is the extent to which we can apply the taxonomy to support us in the twin aims of assessment:

To sum up where learners are at with their learning
To provide learners with the information they need to make further progress

These aims refer to the twin types of assessment with which we are familiar: summative and formative.

The first comes in the form of grades, marks or levels while the second comes in the form of verbal or written comments.

The first is quantitative while the second is qualitative.

The Nature of Assessment

All assessment is contrived.

This is as true for the twelve labours of Hercules as it is for next year’s GCSE exams.

The extent of this contrivance varies depending on that which is being assessed, but the fact that contrivance is the start and the end remains.

This is not problem.

The term is not used in a pejorative sense.

The intention is to draw attention to the fact that all assessments are developed with some end in mind and do not arise naturally.

By this I mean to contrast them to the content of the curriculum, which we might argue does arise naturally (for want of a better word) out of human thought and experience.

To put this another way, what we teach reflects a small amount of the sum of human knowledge and understanding.

How we assess the extent to which learners have grasped this is through contriving suitable questions or tasks that allow us to see the things for which we are looking; that gives us access to the information we want to elicit.

If all assessment is contrived, it follows that the quality of the contrivance can vary.

Assessments can be better or worse depending on their structure and on the thought that has gone into their construction.

That this is the case can be seen by the frustration periodically witnessed when an exam board sets a paper that teachers and learners feel runs contrary to the expectations engendered by the syllabus.

When constructing our own assessments, or working with those created by others, we need to pay attention to the quality of what we are creating or what is on offer.

A few points need to be borne in mind:

Does the assessment fit with the content?
Will the assessment give rise to information that lets us accurately judge the knowledge and understanding of our learners?
Is the assessment accessible for learners, giving them scope through which to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding?
Is the assessment sufficiently challenging to differentiate between varying levels of competency?

Considering these questions when constructing an assessment, or when analysing one someone else has created for our use, means assessing the quality of the contrivance with which we aim to judge learner knowledge and understanding.

In the first case, this can lead us to adapt or amend the assessment we have developed.

In the second case, it can lead us to decide whether what we have in front of us is fit for purpose.

As we will see next, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a uniquely powerful tool on which we can call when planning assessments.

It is also one many other education professionals – including those who work for exam boards – make use of when constructing their assessments.

General Points About the Taxonomy

The taxonomy is progressive. Successive levels are more challenging:

Level 1: Knowledge
Level 2: Comprehension
Level 3: Application
Level 4: Analysis
Level 5: Synthesis
Level 6: Evaluation

Climbing the levels means gaining an increasing degree of mastery over the content with which we are concerned.

It follows that the taxonomy provides a general framework for assessment.

We can use it to structure the questions or tasks we set learners – whether these be formal assessments such as written tests in exam conditions, or informal assessments such as in-class tasks that we take in and mark.

We can also use the taxonomy as the basis of questioning.

Verbal questioning is a type of informal assessment.

It is the most common form of assessment that teachers do.

Whenever we ask a question, we gain information about what learners know and think.

Using the taxonomy to frame our questioning helps us gain access to the kind of information we need to successfully assess learner knowledge and understanding.

To create a formal or informal assessment that allows for sufficient discrimination between the relative ability levels of learners, the taxonomy is a perfect tool.

It gives us six separate points on which we can assess learners.

These can be thought of in isolation, or they can be used in conjunction.

However we approach their application, the purpose is the same: to develop assessments that make a range of cognitive demands on learners, thus giving us the chance to elicit different kinds of information.

For example, most exam papers contain a range of questions that get progressively more challenging.

These often start at the lower levels of the taxonomy and move up towards the higher ones.

(Here we are thinking about cognitive areas of the curriculum. Don’t forget that Bloom’s Taxonomy is a taxonomy of the cognitive domain. It does not, and was never intended, to cover all types of learning and all areas of the curriculum.)

Learners who sit the exams all answer the same questions.

Some do this more successfully than others.

This results in exam scripts containing different information.

By comparing this information to the mark-scheme, discrimination between candidates is achieved.

So it is, for example, that Learner A scores 55%, with most of their marks gained in the earlier questions based on knowledge, comprehension and application, while Learner B scores 92%, gaining marks in the same areas as Learner A, but also in the later areas predicated on analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

From this example we can see that many assessments, particularly formal ones, are tests of mastery.

Learners are judged against a set of criteria that determine the extent to which cognitive ability in a particular context has been demonstrated.

The more answers they get right, the greater mastery they have exhibited if, and only if, the taxonomy is the framework underpinning the questions.

A couple of important points follow.

First, assessments will ideally cover the taxonomy as a whole, giving learners the chance to pick up marks for displaying effective cognition in relation to the different levels.

Second, the weighting of the marks will need to reflect the desire for discrimination – and the range of that discrimination.

If a high proportion of mark are given for knowledge and comprehension, while only a small proportion are allotted to evaluation and synthesis, discrimination between learners becomes difficult.

Those who are more-able will not have the chance to be rewarded for their greater level of mastery.

Similarly, if the situation is reversed and only a few marks are given for knowledge and comprehension while most are given for evaluation and synthesis, learners who are less-able will struggle to achieve any reward for the limited mastery they have developed.

It is for this reason that many exam boards define a series of Bloom’s-based assessment objectives and then spread marks for each of these through exam papers, with the balance tending to shift from the simpler objectives to the more complex ones as the paper progresses.

As an aside, these points highlight the inherent tensions in summative assessment.

Tensions that are, ultimately, not fully resolvable.