Bloom's Taxonomy was originally created in 1956 under the leadership of educational

psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in

education, such as analyzing and evaluating concept, process, procedures and
principles rather than just remembering facts. It is most often used when designing
educational, training, and learning processes. The committee identified
three domains of educational activities or learning namely, Cognitive: mental skills
(knowledge), Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude) and
Psychomotor: manual or physical skills.[ CITATION Don15 \l 1033 ]

Taxonomy is a framework for classifying statements of what we expect or intend students to

learn as a result of instruction. The framework was conceived as a means of facilitating the
exchange of test items among the department at various educational organizations in order to
create banks of items, each measuring the same educational objective.

Cognitive domain of bloom taxonomy

The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills
(Bloom, 1956). This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural
patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and skills.
There are six major categories of cognitive processes, starting from the simplest to the
most complex the taxonomy included the following: Knowledge, Comprehension,
Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. The categories can be thought of as
degrees of difficulties. That is, the first ones must normally be mastered before the
next one can take place.

Bloom revised taxonomy 2001

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): in summary Anderson and David Krathwohl didi the
following

o changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms
 o rearranging categories [they exchanged the position of evaluation and analysis]

o creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix(cognitive and knowledge matrix)

The following are the categories as presented in revised Bloom taxonomy 2001

Category Origina term Keword

Remembering: Recall or Knowledge defines, describes, identifies,
retrieve previous learned knows, labels, lists, matches,
information. names, outlines, recalls,
recognizes, reproduces,
selects, states
Understanding: Comprehension comprehends, converts,
Comprehending the defends, distinguishes,
meaning, translation, estimates, explains, extends,
interpolation, and generalizes, gives an example,
interpretation of instructions infers, interprets, paraphrases,
and problems. State a predicts, rewrites, summarizes,
problem in one's own words translates
Applying: Use a concept in
Application applies, changes, computes,
a new situation or
constructs, demonstrates,
unprompted use of an
discovers, manipulates,
abstraction. Applies what
modifies, operates, predicts,
was learned in the classroom
prepares, produces, relates,
into novel situations in the
shows, solves, uses
work place.

Analyzing: Separates Analysis analyzes, breaks down,

material or concepts into compares, contrasts, diagrams,
component parts so that its deconstructs, differentiates,
organizational structure may discriminates, distinguishes,
be understood. Distinguishes identifies, illustrates, infers,
between facts and inferences outlines, relates, selects,
 separates
Evaluating: Make Synthesis appraises, compares,
judgments about the value of concludes, contrasts, criticizes,
ideas or materials. critiques, defends, describes,
discriminates, evaluates,
explains, interprets, justifies,
relates, summarizes, supports
Creating: Builds a structure
Evaluation categorizes, combines,
or pattern from diverse
compiles, composes, creates,
elements. Put parts together
devises, designs, explains,
to form a whole, with
generates, modifies, organizes,
emphasis on creating a new
plans, rearranges, reconstructs,
meaning or structure.
relates, reorganizes, revises,
rewrites, summarizes, tells,
writes

Differences between bloom taxonomy 1956 and revised version by krathwohl and Anderson

The Bloom Cognitive Taxonomy (1956) and a revised version by krathwohl and
Anderson (2001) are not the same, however there are relation between them such as, both have
six (6) major categories of cognitive domain and these categories were ordered from simple to
complex and from concrete to abstract.

The primary differences between two of them are not in the listing or rewordings from nouns to
verbs or in the renaming of some of the components or even in the re-positioning of the two
categories. The major differences lie in more useful and comprehensive additions of how the
taxonomy intersects and acts upon different types and levels of knowledge.

In the Bloom Cognitive Taxonomy (1956), the Knowledge category embodied both noun and
verb aspects. The noun or subject matter aspect was specified in Knowledge’s extensive
subcategories. The verb aspect was included in the definition given to Knowledge in that the
student was expected to be able to recall or recognize knowledge. For example, consider the
following statement of learning objective, “The student shall be able to remember the law of
supply and demand in economics”.

In above statements of learning objective typically consist of a noun (student) or noun phrase
(law of suppssly and demand), the subject matter (economics), a verb (remembering) and the
cognitive process (The student shall be able to).

This brought unidimensionality to the framework at the cost of a Knowledge category that was
dual in nature and thus different from the other Taxonomic categories.

This anomaly was eliminated in the revised Taxonomy by allowing these two aspects, the noun
and verb, to form separate dimensions, the noun providing the basis for the Knowledge
dimension and the verb forming the basis for the Cognitive Process dimension. For example in
the revised Taxonomy, the above statement of learning objective is written as “Remember the
economics law of supply and demand”. In this form it is clear that the noun phrase is “law of
supply and demand” and the verb is “remember.”

Changes in terminology between the two versions are perhaps the most obvious
differences and can also cause the most confusion. Basically, Bloom's six major categories were
changed from noun to verb forms. Additionally, the lowest level of the original, knowledge was
renamed and became remembering. Finally, comprehension and synthesis were retitled to
understanding and creating. In an effort to minimize the confusion, comparison images appear
below.

Changes in emphasis As it may noted, Bloom himself recognized that the taxonomy was
being "unexpectedly" used by countless groups never considered an audience for the original
publication. The revised version of the taxonomy is intended for a much broader audience.
Emphasis is placed upon its use as a "more authentic tool for curriculum planning, instructional
delivery and assessment"[ CITATION For05 \l 1033 ]

Another difference between two of them is in terms of the knowledge dimension. The
Bloom Cognitive Taxonomy (1956) identified three categories of knowledge which are, factual
knowledge, conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge.
Factual knowledge is the knowledge that is basic to specific disciplines. This dimension refers to
essential facts, terminology, details or elements students must know or be familiar with in order
to understand a discipline or solve a problem in it.

Conceptual knowledge is knowledge of classifications, principles, generalizations, theories,

models or structures pertinent to a particular disciplinary area.

Procedural knowledge refers to information or knowledge that helps students to do something

specific to a discipline, subject or area of study.

These levels of knowledge were indicated in Bloom Cognitive Taxonomy (1956), factual,
conceptual and procedural, were never fully understood or used by teachers because most of
what educators were given in training consisted of a simple charts with the listing of levels and
related accompanying verbs, therefore in order to rise their awareness in a the revised Taxonomy
there is one level of knowledge added which is Metacognitive knowledge.

Metacognitive knowledge is the knowledge which include thinking about ones thinking in a
purposeful way so that one knows how to regulate one’s cognition.

There was a need for revising the original bloom taxonomy by Benjamin Bloom since it had
some shortcomings and criticisms as discussed below.Various

Anachronism

Quite a few new theories and approaches have been involved in the literature as a result of
researches carried out in educational and psychological terms since the date when Bloom’s
taxonomy was published. Theory and approaches such as constructivism, metacognitive skills
and self-regulated learning affect the educational process, support autonomous learning and
cognitive and perceptual necessity of being responsible of the learning process. These theories
and approaches clear up the necessity of the taxonomy revision (Amer, 2006). Today’s world is
different from Bloom’s taxonomy that reflects features of 1956. In this day and time educators
have more knowledge about how learning takes place and how teachers lecture (Startalk, 2009).
In this case, the shortcoming of the taxonomy and the need for an appropriate structure to
become a learner-centered becomes conspicuous.
Agglomeration

Bloom’s taxonomy has an additive sort of structure. It steps forward based on the degree of
difficulty, and according to the need to activate a former one for the next step. There is chiseled
ranking of sections. The taxonomy presents its cognitive process in categories. They are different
from each other just in terms of difficulty. However, the rigid hierarchy between categories was
later softened up and overlapping between categories was provided (Krathwohl, 2001).

Lack of Constructivist Integration

Constructivism emphasizes how students create knowledge while they are busy with meaningful
learning. Constructing process requires both comparing new information with old ones and using
necessary various cognitive processes for this information. In this taxonomy, students may not be
able to participate in an active way in learning process. Students might not be able to select the
information themselves and form their own meaning on their own. In this taxonomy, it is
essential for some students to reach up the top level. Today, it is expected that every student
should make progress on an integrative basis. For this reason, combining program objectives,
teaching, and assessment is more crucial than ever merged (Pickard, 2007).

Unilateral Levels

Knowledge level consists of both noun and verb forms in the taxonomy. Whereas target
dimension described as noun form is situated in the wide frame bottom steps of knowledge step,
verb forms describing cognitional process is defined as students’ recognizing and remembering
the knowledge. As a consequence of that knowledge step expected to have two dimensional
characteristics becomes unilateral. Unilateral structure of the taxonomy fails within the scope of
cognitional process. In the knowledge-sized taxonomy students are asked for both knowing the
knowledge and remembering it. Although this abnormality has been changed in the revised
taxonomy, again this latter one is unidirectional since it takes into account the verb aspect of
cognitional process (Krathwohl, 2001).
Atheoretical Levels

Bloom’s taxonomy is almost 50 years old. It was developed before we understood the cognitive
processes involved in learning and performance. The categories or “levels” of Bloom’s taxonomy
(knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) are not supported
by any research on learning. The only distinction that is supported by research is the distinction
between declarative/conceptual knowledge (which enables recall, comprehension, or
understanding) and procedural knowledge (which enables application or task performance).

Inconsistent Application

The consistent application of Bloom’s taxonomy across multiple designers/developers is

impossible. Given any learning objective, it might be classified into either of the two lowest
levels (knowledge or comprehension) or into any of the four highest levels (application, analysis,
synthesis, or evaluation) by different designers. Equally, there is no consistency in what
constitutes instruction or assessment that targets separate levels. A more reliable approach is to
separate objectives and practice/assessment items into those that elicit or measure
declarative/conceptual knowledge from those that elicit or measure task performance/procedural
knowledge.
 References
Adeli, S. M. (2010, july). A Critical Appraisal of Bloom’s Taxonomy. American Research Journal of English
and Literature(ARJEL).

Forehand, M. (2005, 5). Emergiging perspective in learning. Orey. Retrieved from chrome-
extension://mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai/index.html

Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer,

R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning,
Teaching, and Assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives . New York: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.