Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives by cognitive level, created by Benjamin Bloom et al. in 1956 and revised by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl in 2001. The revised version orders six levels from lower to higher order, Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate and Create, each with measurable action verbs. It turns vague aims into testable objectives and pushes assessment above mere recall.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Details
Full Name

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Cognitive Domain (Revised 2001)

Also known as

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy; Anderson & Krathwohl Taxonomy

Core Concepts:

Six cognitive levels

A hierarchy of what a learner can do with knowledge, from lower-order to higher-order — Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create. Higher levels presuppose the lower ones.

Remember

Retrieve facts from memory — recall, recognise, list, name. The floor, not the goal.

Understand

Construct meaning — explain in one’s own words, summarise, paraphrase, give an example. Understanding is not yet mastery.

Apply

Use knowledge in a new situation — execute, implement, solve a fresh case. The first level that proves transfer beyond the example taught.

Analyze

Break a whole into parts and see how they relate — differentiate, attribute, find the edge cases, trace cause to effect.

Evaluate

Judge against criteria — critique, weigh trade-offs, defend a decision.

Create

Assemble parts into something new — design, build, generate a working solution.

Action verbs per level

Each level has its own measurable verbs, which is what turns a vague aim ("understand recursion") into a testable objective ("implement a recursive traversal", "analyse why this base case prevents infinite recursion").

The 2001 revision

Anderson & Krathwohl turned Bloom’s 1956 nouns into verbs and reordered the top two (the original ended Synthesis → Evaluation; the revision ends Evaluate → Create). They also added a second axis — the knowledge dimension (factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitive) — yielding a two-dimensional taxonomy table.

A heuristic, not a law

The hierarchy is a design aid, not a strict ladder — real tasks mix levels, and Evaluate-vs-Create ordering is debated. Its value is forcing assessment above mere recall, not literal sequencing.

Key Proponents

Benjamin Bloom et al. ("Taxonomy of Educational Objectives", 1956); Lorin Anderson & David Krathwohl ("A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing", 2001 revision)

When to Use:

  • Writing learning objectives so they name a verifiable cognitive level, not a vague "know about"

  • Designing assessments and quizzes that target higher-order thinking (Apply, Analyze) instead of recall

  • Defining what "demonstrated understanding" means — set the gate at Apply/Analyze, not Remember

  • Reviewing training material or documentation for whether it only informs or also builds skill

  • LLM prompting: "Write quiz questions at the Apply and Analyze levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy"

When NOT to Use:

  • As a rigid linear sequence every lesson must climb in order — it is a design lens, not a script

  • For affective or motor learning — the cognitive taxonomy does not cover attitudes (affective domain) or physical skills (psychomotor domain)

  • 4MAT — 4MAT sequences a lesson (Why/What/How/What-If); Bloom grades the cognitive level each step targets

  • Feynman Technique — explaining-it-back is a concrete check at the Understand level; Bloom names the levels above it

  • Socratic Method — questioning drives learners up the levels; Bloom labels where they are

  • Diátaxis Framework — documentation types map loosely to cognitive levels (tutorial → Apply, explanation → Understand)

Current Status:

  • Two versions circulate: the original 1956 framework (Bloom et al.) uses nouns — Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation — while the 2001 revision described above uses verbs and puts Create at the top. The standard citable summary of the differences is Krathwohl, "A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview" (Theory Into Practice 41(4), 2002)

  • An LLM’s training-data prior plausibly blends both versions — material on each is abundant, and many secondary sources mix the level names — so an unqualified "Bloom’s Taxonomy" can anchor to either category set

  • Name the version explicitly: "revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson/Krathwohl 2001)" or "original Bloom’s taxonomy (1956)"