How Blooms' over-recognised, and irrelevant hierarchy has impacted our students, and our teaching.

One of the problems with how we assess is actually Bloom's taxonomy. It is an outdated and flawed way of looking at student product. The idea that creation is the pinnacle of thinking is silly, for one. At any stage of that taxonomy a student needs to create to show their understanding; whether it is a sentence or a poster or a Podcast. They are likely cajoled or forced to create something so we know they are being good little receptacles.

Likewise, the idea thay analysis is any higher or more useful than evaluation or even identifying, the very 1st step of it all, is faulty. I MUST identify to compare. It's innate value is no less. And certainly, in life, there are far more things that I need to evaluate... And evaluation is useful and beautiful and worth just as much as any justification I can make.

I am not coming for Blooms... Like so many things I think it is education systems that got this wrong. Ok, maybe it shouldn't been visualised as a pyramid. But, I can see why, when our visual literacy had not yet bloomed (haha!) he chose that shape, which these days could be refined to some iterative stepping stones on a humble PowerPoint slide.

The problem is...

The end result is that it has given us things like the analytical essay, which is not the ultimate measure of one's knowledge and understanding of a topic, nor is it the only way to contain one's intellectual ability to think creatively or critically. I would actually argue that it drains the life out of both.

I would much rather read a reflective essay or listen to a persuasive Podcast telling me or convincing me of a student's ideas related to a text without any other criteria at all.

The moment we start telling students what to look for in a text they are no longer on their own journey, they are on a road that we have laid for them, and we the teachers and their markers are looking for very specific information and probably even views - which negates the whole purpose of language. It also strips away genuine critical understanding and genuine creative reflection on what is being read or viewed.

I still Blooms my class questioning, only because identifying a 'thing' is the beginning of the whole journey (that the curriculum forces us on). But do I want it as a staple of the pre-teacher curriculum - absolutely not.