Bloom's Taxonomy (Revised)

The revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) organizes cognitive processes into six levels: (1) Remember—retrieving knowledge; (2) Understand—constructing meaning; (3) Apply—carrying out procedures; (4) Analyze—detecting relationships among parts; (5) Evaluate—making criterion-based judgments; (6) Create—assembling elements into novel wholes. The revision converted nouns to verbs (emphasizing processes over categories) and swapped the top two levels. It intersects with four knowledge dimensions (factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitive), creating a 24-cell matrix for precise learning objective design.

When to use it

When designing courses or training programs, when writing learning objectives or assessments, when evaluating whether programs target appropriate cognitive levels, or when structuring self-directed learning to go beyond surface understanding.

How it can help

The most widely used framework for designing objectives, assessments, and curricula. For training creators: write objectives at appropriate cognitive levels—if you want creation, design assessments requiring creation, not recall. For managers: evaluate whether development programs target higher-order thinking or just knowledge recall. For self-learners: progress through all six levels rather than stopping at understanding. Use the taxonomy's verb lists for precise objectives ('evaluate three competing theories' beats 'learn about theories').