Week Six Blog

Based on the reading materials, my understanding is that Bloom’s Taxonomy puts questions into different categories depending on the way the question engages the student with the material. Knowledge questions rely on straight recall of information, and according to the research cited by the readings, this type of question make up the bulk of most tests. Comprehension questions ask the student to interpret information and express deeper meanings. Application questions ask students to use information to solve problems and apply information to specific situations. Analytical questions require the extraction of meaning and the structuring of information. Synthesis questions ask the student to derive new meanings from given facts or older ideas. Synthesis questions combine knowledge from multiple sources. Finally, Evaluative questions compare ideas and evidence in order to choose between competing theories.

With any system of classification, it can be difficult to say for certain if the existing framework represents an adequate diagnostic tool. Since I only found out about Bloom’s Taxonomy today, I can’t say if it represents the best way of classifying test questions. However, it has been in use since 1956, and if the wealth of institutions that cite it are an indication, it must have some value. I can definitely see many of these categories being put to use in the coursework for this class. We learn about a new piece of software or about some teaching tool in class, and then we are asked to apply that knowledge at home in our hands-on assignments. We’ve also done a lot of synthesizing, taking old information, for example information about Microsoft Word or Excel, and applying it to our work as teachers. The fact that Knowledge questions make up the vast majority of test questions in education was not surprising to me, but it was very interesting because with the exception of TV quiz shows, there’s very little real-world use for the straight recall of information without any additional engagement with that material.