Bloom's Taxonomy and the Objectives of Education

Summary Bloom's taxonomy, which has been influential in underpinning many of the curriculum developments of the last fifteen years, may be criticized on various grounds. It is a mistake to suppose that Bloom's taxonomy, or any other proposed classification of objectives, can ever be wholly independent of questions of value. On the contrary, it appears that Bloom's taxonomy ‘suits’ the expression of a pragmatic/materialist ethic, and does not particularly suit the expression of ethics either traditionally, or currently, associated with the concept of ‘education’. In implementation Bloom's taxonomy‐‐it is argued‐‐is a disappointingly blunt instrument. This is particularly apparent when we try to use it in the analysis of mathematics in the upper school. In history the taxonomy seems to lead to conclusions which invert both commonsense and the judgement of experienced teachers. The major criticism of Bloom's taxonomy which is advanced in this paper∗ ∗This is a revised version of a paper which was read by the author at the first of a series of Joint NFER‐Reading University, School of Education Seminars on October 30th, 1973. * Edited version of a talk given at Monash University, Melbourne on 15 November 1990. is, however, that the taxonomy omits a vital ingredient in education: the development of imaginative understanding. The crucial problem is therefore to identify the behavioural expression of imaginative understanding. This is defined as a ‘continuity of fluent response to “if . . . then” . . . questioning’. In the final part of the paper a new approach to the objectives of education is sketched, based centrally on the concept of imaginative understanding. The problem of formulating a satisfactory account of the objectives of education is, it is noted, particularly acute in relation to the education of the hyper‐aware student. The valuable mental residue of imaginative understanding is confidence: and confident response in turn often acts as a sign that the student really understands.