The Application Of The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy In Elementary Mathematics' Teaching: Theory And Practice

The nature of knowledge and skill and their relationship are fundamental issues which should be classified during the curriculum reforms and development. However, Three Dimensional Objectives Taxonomy proposed during the new curriculum reforms, which consisted of knowledge and skill, process and method, affection and attitude, does less help for classifying the issues. Actually, they become seroius problems embarrassing the theorists and practitioners in middle and elementary school. Specifying the educational objectives from the knowledge dimension and the cognitive process dimension, the revised Bloom's taxonomy provides us a specific, useful and practical framework to deal with the teaching of knowledge and skills.Based on the revised Bloom's taxonomy, this study is to address the theoretic problem of educational objectives in mathematics curriculum, and the application of the new taxonomy to mathematics teaching.This research includes two parts. In the first part, the Mathematic Curriculum Standards (MCS) was analyzed from the new taxonomy's perspective. The Tree Dimension objectives and global objectives of MCS are dignosed separately. And the correspondent suggestions are provided. On the other hand, based on the two dimensions of the revised Bloom's taxonomy, the implication of the each standard appeared in MCS is discussed for the primary teaching practice.In the second part, an experiment was conducted to investigate the use of the revised Bloom's taxonomy. The strength was highlighted by comparing the differences between the experimental group and the controlled group. The results show that: 1) there is significant difference in the instructional effects between the two groups; 2) there are many differences in the aspects of quality of the objectives, learning activities, assessment and their alignment between the two groups. The revised taxonomy can enhance the clarity and accuracy of objectives so that instruction can benefit more from the objectives. It also helps the teachers design more objective-based learning activities and helps students involved in a deeper and more meaningful learning. What's more, the instructors' ability to combine the formative evaluation and summative evaluation and their awareness of assessment are enhanced, showing a better coordination among the objectives, learning activities and assessment.