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Mathematics and Life 96 Bloom's taxonomy and mathematics education

 Bloom's taxonomy and mathematics education


Background As the field of educational psychology was evolving, various learning theories were formulated and experimental psychology was getting its roots into the education system, the need of some stages, measurable levels of development was felt. Benjamin Bloom proposed the Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Taxonomy means a system, a protocol, a formulation of accepted policies.


The biggest contribution of Bloom's taxonomy has been that it has given an easy system to understand, design, execute and evaluate levels of educational objectives. The system has been so robust that Bloom's taxonomy finds mention even at the top corporate training programs. 


Bloom defined 

Remember

Understand

Apply

Analyse

Evaluate

Create 

As the six gradual incremental levels of competence. Remember pertains to memory recall and Create means to design, visualise, develop new solutions. Between these two extremes lie all other abilities as can be seen in the image below





Application to mathematics education  A maths teacher can use these objectives in many ways. After assessing her class on these objectives, the teacher can use the results to develop her lesson plans, implementation in classroom teaching, evaluation of students and giving them feedback on their mathematical abilities.


Remember simple recall of core symbols, tables, formulae 

Understand through mixing of symbols, formula the teacher can test whether the students understand what the symbols, formulae meant

Apply -  In life situations students can be asked to apply the knowledge they have or the teacher can give questions where the students have to apply / use the content knowledge.

Analyse The case study questions and geometric proofs are examples of using the skill of analysis. Here, the students have to analyse the given, to prove etc and develop a strategy 

Evaluate These are very higher order thinking skills where the student has to compare two or more alternatives, evaluate pros and cons and decide the right strategy. Not too much has been done in this regard and is a green field to explore.

Create This is the highest level of educational objectives. Students may be involved in creating Projects like the art math integration project. 


Knowledge of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives thus provides a very broad base for developing different facets of mathematical abilities of the students.


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Comments

  1. UnknownApril 21, 2021 at 8:48 AM

    This blog has helped to understand Bloom's texonomy very easily and comprehensive

    ReplyDelete

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