CSUN QUICK TUTORIALS: TSENG COLLEGE
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Recommended Readings
Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., eds. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and
assessing: a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives; abridged edition. NY:
Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
and
Revised Bloom's Taxonomy Link
Contributions to http://ances.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.
Introduction
Bloom’s taxonomy is a well-known model for thinking about student learning outcomes. It was
originally developed by Benjamin Bloom in the 1950’s. He developed it with a committee of
educators whose goal was to create a classification system for learning objectives. The concept
of developing learning objectives to describe student learning is widely adapted for a variety of
learning environments.
Originally Bloom’s Taxonomy consisted of the following levels:
Cognitive: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation
Affective: Receiving, Responding, Valuing, Organizing, Characterizing
Psychomotor: Perception, Set, Guided Response, Mechanism, Complex Overt Response,
Adaptation, Origination
Revision to Bloom’s
Recently, with the advent of new media and considerable discussion about the taxonomy, a new
version of Bloom’s Taxonomy was developed. In this version the levels moved from nouns to
verbs and a new top level, creating, was proposed. It is commonly depicted in the following
graphic.
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CSUN QUICK TUTORIALS: TSENG COLLEGE
Figure 1. Diagrammatic Representation of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Thinking
HLWIKI International. (2013). Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Retrieved and revised from HLWIKI
International
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
Commonly, Bloom’s taxonomy is applied by identifying verbs that are related to the specific
levels, writing objectives or questions that reflect the action. These are usually the kind of
thinking that the student will be asked to engage in. Common verbs that are associated with the
various levels are listed in the following table. The Green areas are the revisions while the Red
areas are the original Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Table 1. Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised
Cognitive Domain
Verbs – some examples… (The student will…):
Remembering
Identify, define, memorize, tell, copy, recite, record, label,
match, and quote.
Understanding
Summarize, paraphrase, relate, cite, convert, describe, explain,
interpret, classify, and indicate.
Applying
Experiment, sketch, construct, prepare, report, implement,
manipulate, complete, solve, and apply.
Analyzing
Compare, contrast, differentiate, prioritize, investigate,
deconstruct, discriminate, calculate, analyze, and correlate.
Evaluating
Criticize, judge, evidence, support, defend, predict, argue,
hypothesize, critique, and evaluate.
Creating
Generate, design, construct, plan, compose, create, write,
modify, compile, and produce.
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