The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

Taxonomies

Contributors: Larry E. Sullivan Editors: Larry E. Sullivan Book Title: The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Chapter Title: "Taxonomies" Pub. Date: 2009 Access Date: October 08, 2013 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781412951432 Online ISBN: 9781412972024 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412972024.n2516 Print page: 510

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412972024.n2516 The classification of different educational skills or abilities. Taxonomies are often used to define educational objectives and to classify instructional and assessment tasks. Taxonomies gener ally fall into one of three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. In 1956, Benjamin Bloom developed a taxonomy for the cognitive domain, which focuses on skills relating to memory, thinking, and reasoning. The cognitive taxonomy comprises six levels of complexity: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The least complex cognitive skill is knowledge, which focuses on the recall of facts or concepts. Knowledge-level skills may include defining, describing, and matching. Comprehension refers to a level of understanding in which the individual can interpret, translate, or describe. Examples of behaviors that demonstrate comprehension are giving examples, paraphrasing, or summarizing. Application refers to the ability of an individual to use acquired knowledge in a new situation and may include demonstrating, compu ting, solving, and manipulating. Analysis involves breaking down information into parts and may include classification, outlining, making inferences, and analyzing relationships. Synthesis is the ability to take parts of elements into a new whole or into a new pattern. Synthesis may include categorizing, designing, composing, and compiling. The most sophisticated cognitive level is evaluation, which is defined as making judgments or evaluations about information based on a specific set of criteria, either defined internally or externally. Evaluation may ask the student to appraise, justify, support, or criticize. The original Bloom's taxonomy was revised in 2001 by Anderson, Krathwohl, and several other contributors, who changed the levels from noun to verb format and reversed the order of synthesis and evaluation as being the most cognitively complex. Other cognitive taxonomies also exist, although Bloom's original and revised taxonomies remain the most commonly cited. Taxonomies in the affective domain classify emotional reactions and feelings. Bloom's subcategories for the affective domain are receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization. Receiving refers to being aware or conscious of something. Responding refers to reaction to a stimulus. Valuing refers to the attachment of a value to a phenomenon, object, or experience. Organization refers to putting together different values or ideas into one's own set of complex values. Characterization refers to the influence of the internal set of values on an individual's behaviors and life.

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The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Taxonomies

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Skills in the psychomotor domain refer to abilities to physically manipulate objects and tools. While Bloom did not develop subcategories for the psychomotor domain, other researchers, including Harrow (1972), have continued this work. Harrow's classification levels include Reflex Movements, Basic-Fundamental Movements, Perceptual Abilities, Physical Abilities, Skilled Movements, and Non-Discursive Communi cation. For more information, see Anderson et al. (2001), Bloom, Engelhard, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl (1956), and Harrow (1972). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412972024.n2516 See also

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The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Taxonomies