BLOOM’S TAXONOMY OF LEARNING

Intro: Bloom’s taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning
objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists cover the learning objectives in
cognitive, affective and sensory or psychomotor domains. (by Wikipedia)

History: this taxonomy of learning was named after Dr. Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) an educational
psychologist of Pennsylvania. His theory has been practiced since 1956 and later revisited and revised
after determining that Synthesis was a higher thinking process than evaluation and to show “verbs”
instead of “nouns,” by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl in 2001.

What does bloom taxonomy mean in education?

Bloom’s taxonomy is a classification system used to define and distinguish different levels of human
cognition—i.e., thinking, learning, and understanding. Educators have typically used Bloom’s taxonomy
to inform or guide the development of assessments (tests and other evaluations of student learning),
curriculum (units, lessons, projects, and other learning activities), and instructional methods such as
questioning strategies.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for their
students (learning objectives). The taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an educational
psychologist at the University of Chicago. The terminology has been recently updated to include the
following six levels of learning. These 6 levels can be used to structure the learning objectives, lessons
and assessments of your course. :
1. Remembering: Retrieving,recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long‐term
memory.
2. Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through
interpreting, exemplifying, classifying,summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
3. Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing.
4. Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one
another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and
attributing.
5. Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
6. Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing
elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.
 BLOOM'S REVISED TAXONOMY
Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the cognitive domain in the
mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the three most prominent ones being (Anderson,
Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, Wittrock, 2000):
1. changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms
2. rearranging them as shown in the chart below
3. creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix
The chart shown below compares the original taxonomy with the revised one:
 THE THREE DOMAINS OF LEARNING
1. Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
2. Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)
3. Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

This new taxonomy reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate. The new
version of Bloom's Taxonomy, with examples and keywords is shown below, while the old version may
be found here.
Table of the Revised Cognitive Domain

Examples, key words (verbs), and technologies for

Category
learning (activities)

Examples: Recite a policy. Quote prices from memory to a

customer. Recite the safety rules.
Key Words: defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels,
Remembering: Recall or retrieve
lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes,
previous learned information.
reproduces, selects, states
Technologies: book marking, flash cards, rote learning
based on repetition, reading

Examples: Rewrite the principles of test writing. Explain in

one's own words the steps for performing a complex task.
Translate an equation into a computer spreadsheet.
Understanding: Comprehending the
Key Words: comprehends, converts, defends,
meaning, translation, interpolation, and
distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes,
interpretation of instructions and
gives an example, infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts,
problems. State a problem in one's own
rewrites, summarizes, translates
words.
Technologies: create an analogy, participating
in cooperative learning, taking notes, storytelling, Internet
search

Examples: Use a manual to calculate an employee's

Applying: Use a concept in a new
situation or unprompted use of an
abstraction. Applies what was learned
in the classroom into novel situations in
the work place.
vacation time. Apply laws of statistics to evaluate the
reliability of a written test.
Key Words: applies, changes, computes, constructs,
demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates,
predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses

Analyzing: Separates material or
concepts into component parts so that
its organizational structure may be
understood. Distinguishes between
facts and inferences.
Evaluating: Make judgments about the
value of ideas or materials.
Creating: Builds a structure or pattern
from diverse elements. Put parts
together to form a whole, with
emphasis on creating a new meaning or
structure.
Technologies: collaborative learning, create a process,
blog, practice
Examples: Troubleshoot a piece of equipment by using
logical deduction. Recognize logical fallacies in
reasoning. Gathers information from a department and
selects the required tasks for training.
Key Words: analyzes, breaks down, compares,
contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates,
discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers,
outlines, relates, selects, separates
Technologies: Fishbowls, debating, questioning what
happened, run a test
Examples: Select the most effective solution. Hire the
most qualified candidate. Explain and justify a new
budget.
Key Words: appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts,
criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates,
evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates,
summarizes, supports
Technologies: survey, blogging
Examples: Write a company operations or process
manual. Design a machine to perform a specific task.
Integrates training from several sources to solve a
problem. Revises and process to improve the outcome.
Key Words: categorizes, combines, compiles, composes,
creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies,
organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates,
reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes
Technologies: Create a new model, write an essay,
network with others
 Cognitive Processes and Levels of Knowledge Matrix
Bloom's Revised Taxonomy not only improved the usability of it by using action words, but added a
cognitive and knowledge matrix.
While Bloom's original cognitive taxonomy did mention three levels of knowledge or products that could
be processed, they were not discussed very much and remained one-dimensional:
o Factual - The basic elements students must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve
problems.
o Conceptual – The interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that
enable them to function together.
o Procedural - How to do something, methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms,
techniques, and methods.
In Krathwohl and Anderson's revised version, the authors combine the cognitive processes with the
above three levels of knowledge to form a matrix. In addition, they added another level of knowledge -
metacognition:
o Metacognitive – Knowledge of cognition in general, as well as awareness and knowledge of
one’s own cognition.
When the cognitive and knowledge dimensions are arranged in a matrix, as shown below, it makes a
nice performance aid for creating performance objectives:
The Cognitive Dimension

The Knowledge Dimension Remember Under-stand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create

Factual

Conceptual

Procedural

Metacognitive

However, others have identified five contents or artifacts (Clark, Chopeta, 2004; Clark, Mayer, 2007):
o Facts - Specific and unique data or instance.
o Concepts - A class of items, words, or ideas that are known by a common name, includes
multiple specific examples, shares common features. There are two types of concepts: concrete
and abstract.
o Processes - A flow of events or activities that describe how things work rather than how to do
things. There are normally two types: business processes that describe work flows and technical
 processes that describe how things work in equipment or nature. They may be thought of as the
big picture, of how something works.
o Procedures - A series of step-by-step actions and decisions that result in the achievement of a
task. There are two types of actions: linear and branched.
o Principles - Guidelines, rules, and parameters that govern. It includes not only what should be
done, but also what should not be done. Principles allow one to make predictions and draw
implications. Given an effect, one can infer the cause of a phenomena. Principles are the basic
building blocks of causal models or theoretical models (theories).
Thus, the new matrix would look similar to this:
The Cognitive Dimension

The Knowledge Dimension Remember Under-stand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create

Facts

Concepts

Processes

Procedures

Principles

Metacognitive

An example matrix that has been filled in might look something like this:

The Knowledge
Remember Under-stand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create
Dimension

Facts list para-phrase classify outline rank categorize

Concepts recall explains show contrast criticize modify

Processes outline estimate produce diagram defend design

give an
Procedures reproduce relate identify critique plan
example

different-
Principles state converts solve conclude revise
iates

Meta-cognitive proper use interpret discover infer predict actualize

Alternative to Bloom: Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) Taxonomy
While Bloom's Taxonomy has been quite useful in that it has extended learning from simply
remembering to more complex cognitive structures, such as analyzing and evaluating, newer models
have come along. However, it has become more useful with the revised taxonomy.
One model that might prove more useful is the Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO)
taxonomy. It is a model that describes levels of increasing complexity in a learner's understanding of
subjects (Biggs, Collis, 1982). It aids both trainers and learners in understanding the learning process.
The model consists of five levels in the order of understanding:
o Pre-structural - The learner doesn't understood the lesson and uses a much too simple means of
going about it—the learner is unsure about the lesson or subject.
o Uni-structural - The learner's response only focuses on one relevant aspect—the learner has
only a basic concept about the subject.
o Multi-structural - The learner's response focuses on several relevant aspects but they are
treated independently—the learner has several concepts about the subject but they are
disconnected. Assessment of this level is primarily quantitative.
o Relational - The different aspects have become integrated into a coherent whole—the learner
has mastered the complexity of the subject by being able to join all the parts together. This level
is what is normally meant by an adequate understanding of a subject.
o Extended abstract - The previous integrated whole may be conceptualized at a higher level of
abstraction and generalized to a new topic or area—the learner is now able to create new ideas
based on her mastery of the subject.
SOLO not only shows the instructors how the learners are progressing, but also the learners themselves.
It does this by putting the processes in squares. You start in the center square (Uni-structural) and work
outwards (Multi-structural, Relational, and finally Extended Abstract).
The example below shows the concept of ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implement, and
Evaluate) and how it starts with learning facts and ends with being able to create a learning process or
training using ADDIE:
While some learning theory is part of the descriptive sciences, which describe the way things function in
the natural world; Instructional System Design is more a part of the design sciences, which offer ways to
perform certain human-defined tasks. Descriptive sciences can be considered the law as they aim to
describe and explain, while design sciences are roadmaps that guide our knowledge and skills for the
activities of design (Grimaldi, Engel, 2007).
Being a design science, ISD is a model to aid in the design, development, and delivery of performance
through learning, training and development processes. Since there is “science” in the term, it must be
evidence-based. However, because we are dealing with one of the most complex objects known to us —
the human brain, at times there is not enough evidence. For this reason we have “design” in the term,
which means it is also art.