Effective training programs start with Bloom’s taxonomy.
Most instructional designers are familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is a classification of learning objectives based in the cognitive (mental) domain. It also includes the affective (attitude) and psychomotor (physical) domains. The taxonomy was created in 1956 by an educational committee chaired by Benjamin Bloom, an American educational psychologist.
Bloom’s Taxonomy was revised in 2000. Amazingly, the core principles are still relevant today for instructor-led training, e-learning, and everything in between. Let’s take a closer look at the original and then examine what has changed.
The original Bloom’s Taxonomy includes a table for learning goals in the cognitive domain. This table is the most well-known part of the framework. It helps teachers and learners build key thinking skills. These skills include remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
- Knowledge: Learner’s ability to recall information
- Comprehension: Learner’s ability to understand information
- Application: Learner’s ability to use information in a new way
- Analysis: Learner’s ability to break down information into its essential parts
- Synthesis: Learner’s ability to create something new from different elements of information
- Evaluation: Learner’s ability to judge or criticize information
In 2000, Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, updated Bloom’s Taxonomy. David Krathwohl, one of Bloom’s original research partners, helped with the changes. They wanted the new version to fit the needs of 21st-century students and teachers. Their goal was to make it more useful for modern learning.
Anderson and Krathwohl’s Taxonomy
- Remembering: Learner’s ability to recall information
- Understanding: Learner’s ability to understand information
- Applying: Learner’s ability to use information in a new way
- Analyzing: Learner’s ability to break down information into its essential parts
- Evaluating: Learner’s ability to judge or criticize information
- Creating: Learner’s ability to create something new from different elements of information
Anderson and Krathwohl Updates
The updates are reflective of a more active thought process and include three main changes:
1. Category names were revised from nouns to verbs.
Anderson and Krathwohl believed that subject matter and thinking skills should be two separate parts. Subject matter is the noun. Thinking skills are the verb. They replaced Bloom’s nouns with action verbs. This change helped show what kind of thinking happens in each category.
2. The last two stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy were switched so that evaluation (evaluating) comes before synthesis (creating).
Anderson and Krathwohl believed that learners must evaluate before they can create. Because of this, they changed the order of the last two categories in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Now, evaluate comes before create.
3. The knowledge (remembering) category was updated to reflect four knowledge dimensions instead of three.
The original Bloom’s Taxonomy listed three types of knowledge under the remembering category. These are called knowledge dimensions. The first is factual knowledge. It includes basic facts and ideas. The second is conceptual knowledge. It shows how ideas connect to each other. The third is procedural knowledge. It explains how to do something or follow steps. Later, Anderson and Krathwohl added a fourth type. This is metacognitive knowledge. It means understanding how you think and being aware of your own thinking process.
To learn more about the updates to Bloom’s Taxonomy, read Anderson and Krathwohl’s book. The book is titled A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.
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