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Chapter VI
Bloom's Taxonomy
Background Information
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom and his collaborators
published a framework for categorizing
educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives. Familiarly known as Bloom’s
Taxonomy, this framework has been applied
by generations of K-12 teachers and college
instructors in their teaching.
The framework elaborated by Bloom and his
collaborators consisted of six major categories:
Knowledge, Comprehension, Application,
Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.
The categories after Knowledge were
presented as “skills and abilities,” with the
understanding that knowledge was the
necessary precondition for putting these skills
and abilities into practice.
While each category contained subcategories,
all lying along a continuum from simple to
complex and concrete to abstract, the
taxonomy is popularly remembered according
to the six main categories.
The Original Taxonomy (1956)
Knowledge “involves the recall of specifics and
universals, the recall of methods and
processes, or the recall of a pattern, structure,
or setting.”
Comprehension “refers to a type of
understanding or apprehension such that the
individual knows what is being communicated
and can make use of the material or idea being
communicated without necessarily relating it to
other material or seeing its fullest implications.”
Application refers to the “use of abstractions in
particular and concrete situations.”
Analysis represents the “breakdown of a
communication into its constituent elements or
parts such that the relative hierarchy of ideas is
made clear and/or the relations between ideas
expressed are made explicit.”
Synthesis involves the “putting together of
elements and parts so as to form a whole.”
Evaluation engenders “judgments about the
value of material and methods for given
purposes.”
The Revised Taxonomy (2001)
A group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum
theorists and instructional researchers, and
testing and assessment specialists published in
2001 a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the
title A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning,
and Assessment. This title draws attention
away from the somewhat static notion of
“educational objectives” (in Bloom’s original
title) and points to a more dynamic conception
of classification.
The authors of the revised taxonomy
underscore this dynamism, using verbs and
gerunds to label their categories and
subcategories (rather than the nouns of the
original taxonomy).
These “action words” describe the cognitive
processes by which thinkers encounter and
work with knowledge:
Remember
• Recognizing
• Recalling
Understand
• Interpreting
• Exemplifying
• Classifying
• Summarizing
• Inferring
• Comparing
• Explaining
Apply
• Executing
• Implementing
Analyze
• Differentiating
• Organizing
• Attributing
Evaluate
• Checking
• Critiquing
Create
• Generating
• Planning
• Producing
In the revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of
these six cognitive processes, but its authors created
a separate taxonomy of the types of knowledge used
in cognition:
Factual Knowledge
• Knowledge of terminology
• Knowledge of specific details and elements
Conceptual Knowledge
• Knowledge of classifications and categories
• Knowledge of principles and generalizations
• Knowledge of theories, models, and structures
Procedural Knowledge
• Knowledge of subject-specific skills and
algorithms
• Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and
methods
• Knowledge of criteria for determining when to
use appropriate procedures
Metacognitive Knowledge
• Strategic Knowledge
• Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including
appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge
• Self-knowledge
Why Use Bloom’s Taxonomy?
The authors of the revised taxonomy suggest a multi-
layered answer to this question, to which clarifying
points can be added:
• Objectives (learning goals) are important to
establish in a pedagogical interchange so that
teachers and students alike understand the purpose of
that interchange.
• Organizing objectives helps to clarify objectives
for themselves and for students.
• Having an organized set of objectives helps
teachers to:
“plan and deliver appropriate instruction”;
“design valid assessment tasks and strategies”; and
“ensure that instruction and assessment are aligned
with the objectives.”
Thank You
