Revised Bloom's Taxonomy in the Cognitive Domain

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom and other educational psychologists developed a classification system of levels of cognitive skills and learning behavior. The classification they created is often referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy. The word taxonomy means classifications or structures. Bloom's Taxonomy classifies thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity. The classifications are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

In the mid-nineties, Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, revisited the cognitive domain in the learning taxonomy and made some changes, with perhaps the two most prominent ones being, 

(1) changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms, and (2) slightly rearranging them.

The new classifications are: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

• Remembering: Exhibit memory of previously learned material by recalling facts, terms, basic concepts, and answers.
• Verbs: Defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects, states

• Understanding: Demonstrate understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating main ideas.
• Verbs: Comprehends, converts, defends, distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives an example, infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts, rewrites, summarizes, translates.

• Applying: Solve problems to new situations by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different way.
• Verbs: Applies, changes, computes, constructs, demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates, predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses.

• Analyzing: Examine and break information into parts by identifying motives or causes. Make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations.
• Verbs: Analyzes, breaks down, compares, contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates, discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, relates, selects, separates.

• Evaluating: Present and defend opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas, or quality of work based on a set of criteria. 
• Verbs: Appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports.

 

• Creating: Compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions.
• Verbs: Categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates, reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes.