Imagining Bloom: Visualizations of Bloom’s Taxonomy in Educational Research and Beyond

• In Event: International Studies of the Sociologies of the Knowledge of Science, Visual Cultures and Affective Economies in Education, Part II

Proposal

One of the most influential notions of psychology to influence the American curriculum in decades after World War 2 and continues today in European Curriculum projects is Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al, 1956). What image comes to your mind when you hear ‘Blooms Taxonomy’? Most likely it is a pyramid with several different colored levels of knowledge from ‘remember’ to ‘create’, with implied or explicit arrows pointing upward. In fact, this visualization of the taxonomy is one of the most popular. Yet, its origin remains a mystery: it was not part of Bloom’s original framework or the later revision. Essentially a product of behaviorism, Bloom’s Taxonomy has not only survived its decline but is still widely used in educational planning and evaluation in different parts of the world. Moreover, a Google image search reveals that in public domain Bloom’s taxonomy has been transformed into a wide variety of different visual shapes, including but not limited to stairs, trees, circles, and flowers. But what assumptions about knowledge do these visualizations convey?

The overall aim of this paper is to explore visual epistemologies embedded in the production and dissemination of knowledge. More specifically, we focus on the links between knowledge and visuality and the role of pictures in the (visual) ordering of knowledge. Using Bloom’s taxonomy as a case, we explore how it has been visualized in educational research and what happens to its core ideas when the taxonomy “travels” into the public domain through pictures. What ways of thinking, knowing, seeing, and acting in the world do these pictures suggest? How do they enact, negotiate and transform the original work of Bloom and his colleagues in relation to instruction and the curriculum?

The study consists of three parts. First, to place the taxonomy in its historical and epistemological context, we analyze Bloom’s original work and its revision, paying special attention to the choice of the taxonomy as a theoretical model borrowed from the natural sciences. We then trace the visualizations of the taxonomy in educational research. Finally, we collect and analyze over 100 pictures from a wide range of online resources, including websites of educational institutions, teacher blogs, online tutoring platforms, etc. In all three parts, the analysis focuses on the assumptions and beliefs about knowledge implicit in the Bloom’s Taxonomy and its different visual representations.

By focusing on the role of pictorial images in mediating this communication within and beyond the scientific domain, the paper offers a historical and critical analysis of visual epistemologies that underlie curriculum research and make scientific truths visible, intelligible and applicable to pedagogical practices. Thus, we argue that different visualizations of Bloom’s taxonomy reflect and produce different ways of seeing and acting in education.

Authors

• Tatiana Mikhaylova

• Daniel Pettersson, University of Gavle