Updated: Taxonomy Circles – Visualisations of Educational Domains

[See Courses on Educational Taxonomies]

Since October 17th 2012 [see updates] when I shared the most recent work on visualising taxonomies in a circular form and aligning these active verb patterns to particular assessment forms, I have had some great feedback – for which thank you. As a consequence, I have made a few clarifications which I hope will help those of you who want to use these visualisations in your conversations with peers or in academic educational development sessions. The biggest change has been to ‘turn’ the circles through 72′ clockwise so that the vertical denotes a “12-noon” start. I hesitate about this because it perhaps over stresses our obsession which mechanical process which isn’t my intention, but many said they would prefer this and so here it is. The second change has been to review, in the light of my own use, and some literature sources (noted on the images themselves) some of the active verbs and evidence.

I am very grateful for the feedback and hope to receive more. In answer to the question about citing this work; there is a journal article and a book chapter in the works, in the meantime please feel free to cite the blog posts. Or indeed personal correspondence at spa@sijen.com if you would like to share how these may be working for you in practice.

Click on the images to get a decent quality print version – please email if you would like the original PowerPoint slide to amend and modify.


Cognitive Domain – Circle – Taxonomy – Version 4 – November 2012 (Intellectual Skills)

Cognitive Domain – Taxonomy Circle

Affective  Domain – Circle – Taxonomy – Version 4 – November 2012 (Professional and Personal Skills)

Affective Domain – Taxonomy Circle

Psychomotor Domain – Circle – Taxonomy – Version 4 – November 2012 (Transferable Skills)

Psychomotor Domain – Taxonomy Circle – after Dave (1969/71)

Knowledge Domain – Circle – Taxonomy – Version 2 – November 2012 (Subject/Discipline Skills)

This representation is perhaps the most ‘controversial’ as it represents the ‘knowledge dimension’ articulated by Anderson and colleagues as a separate domain. For the purposes of working with subject-centric academics within their disciplines as they write intended learning outcomes and assessment, I have found this a useful and sensible thing to do. I have separated out the notion of ‘contextual knowledge’ which is also not going to please everyone.

Knowledge Domain – Taxonomy Circle

I hope these representations are of some use to you in your practice. Simon (13 Nov 2012)

%d bloggers like this: