Understanding Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (2001)

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification system used to define and distinguish different levels of human cognition—thinking, learning, and understanding. The revised version published in 2001 updated the original 1956 taxonomy, changing the nouns to verbs to represent the active nature of thinking and rearranging some levels. The revised taxonomy includes six levels of cognitive processes, ordered from lower-order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills:

1. Remembering
2. Understanding
3. Applying
4. Analyzing
5. Evaluating
6. Creating

The question asks which category involves presenting and defending opinions, making judgments based on criteria, and looking critically at problems. Let's examine the options provided in the context of the revised taxonomy.

Analyzing the Cognitive Levels

Let's briefly look at what each relevant cognitive level in the revised Bloom's Taxonomy entails:

• Remembering: This involves retrieving relevant knowledge from long-term memory. It's about recognizing or recalling facts, terms, basic concepts, or answers without necessarily understanding what they mean.
• Understanding: This involves constructing meaning from different types of functions, be they written or graphic messages, or activities like interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, or explaining. It's about grasping the meaning of information.
• Applying: This involves carrying out or using a procedure in a given situation. This includes executing or implementing. Applying knowledge means using acquired information or skills in new situations.
• Evaluating: This involves making judgments based on criteria and standards. This includes checking and critiquing. It requires presenting and defending opinions, assessing the validity of ideas or the quality of work, and engaging in critical thinking.
• Creating: This involves putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure. This includes generating, planning, or producing. It's about producing original work or ideas.

Connecting the Description to the Category

The description provided in the question—presenting and defending opinions, making judgments about information, validating of ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria, and looking at problems in a critical way—directly aligns with the characteristics of the Evaluating level in Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.

• "Presenting and defending opinions" and "validating of ideas or quality of work" are core activities within evaluation, where one supports their judgment.
• "Making judgments about information... based on a set of criteria" is the definition of evaluation—applying standards or criteria to make decisions or judgments.
• "Looking at the problems in a critical way" is synonymous with critical thinking, which is integral to the evaluating process.

Comparing this to the other options:

• Applying involves using knowledge or procedures, not making judgments about their quality or validity.
• Remembering involves recalling facts, which is a foundational skill but does not involve making critical judgments or defending opinions.
• Creating involves producing something new, which may follow evaluation, but the act of judging and defending opinions based on criteria is the evaluation step itself.

Therefore, the activities described clearly fall under the Evaluating category.