A context-aware analysis scheme for Bloom’s taxonomy

A large body of empirical work in the software comprehension area has focused on the cognitive processes that programmers undertake. However, as yet, little work exists on developing and assessing an encompassing framework within which one can compare the results from these software comprehension studies with one another. Several authors have proposed that Bloom’s taxonomy could provide such a framework and a lexical-analysis schema has been trialled to classify the data from empirical studies into this taxonomy. The schema is simple to apply but may result in ambiguity and reductionism. This paper proposes an alternative context-aware analysis schema. While such a schema undoubtedly consumes more effort, its value is illustrated by means of a pilot study, where its application is compared to that of the lexical-analysis schema.