Beyond Bloom's Ladder: A New Look at Learning

"You start on the bottom rung with "basic" skills, climb upward through progressively "advanced" ones, and eventually reach the top. But real life doesn't work that way. Learning is not sequential. It's messy, opportunistic, and observable in what people do, whether listing, summarizing, analyzing, or creating. We see it in the ways learners analyze, adapt, revise, and defend their choices. Denying this reality by insisting on a strict sequence doesn't accelerate growth. It turns the road to mastery into an obstacle course."

""Although it is possible to conceive of these major classes in several different arrangements, the present one appears to us to represent something of the hierarchical order of the different classes of objectives. As we have defined them, the objectives in one class are likely to make use of and be built on the behaviors found in the preceding classes in this list.""

Learning does not proceed as a neat ladder; it unfolds messily, opportunistically, and through observable actions such as listing, summarizing, analyzing, and creating. Observable behaviors like analyzing, adapting, revising, and defending choices demonstrate growth. Insisting on a strict sequential hierarchy can obstruct mastery rather than accelerate it. Toddlers improvise sentences without mastering every word, and adults often solve problems without following every rule in sequence. Historical discoveries frequently emerged from unexpected leaps rather than linear progression. The hierarchical ladder metaphor traces to Bloom's 1956 taxonomy, which ordered knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation into presumed hierarchical classes.

Read at Psychology Today