What it shows
The revised Bloom’s taxonomy is the 2001 version of the cognitive domain by Anderson, Krathwohl and colleagues (as cited in Krathwohl, 2002), and this drawing shows the six levels of its cognitive process dimension. They rise from Remember at the base through Understand, Apply, Analyze and Evaluate to Create at the top. They are stacked bands that narrow toward the top, matching the affective-domain figure it pairs with, and the stepped shape echoes the pyramid the taxonomy is often drawn as.
Each level has a one-line description shortened from Krathwohl’s (2002) definitions and, under it, the cognitive processes it contains, in his terms and his order. These are the revision’s 19 processes, not the longer verb lists that circulate under Bloom’s name, which are not part of the revision. The arrow up the side reads “Increasing complexity (levels overlap)”: the levels differ in complexity, but the revision relaxed the strict hierarchy of the original so that they can overlap.
How to read it
Remember, the base level, is retrieving knowledge from memory by recognizing or recalling it.
Understand holds the most processes, seven of them, from interpreting to explaining. Apply, above it, holds two: executing and implementing.
Analyze breaks material into parts and sees how they relate (differentiating, organizing, attributing), and Evaluate judges against criteria and standards (checking, critiquing).
Create, at the top, puts elements together into a new whole by generating, planning and producing.
Keep the caveat on the arrow in mind. Krathwohl (2002) notes that explaining, an Understand process, is more complex than executing, an Apply process, which is the overlap the label means.
The six levels
- Remember: retrieves knowledge from memory. Recognizing, recalling.
- Understand: determines the meaning of messages. Interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, explaining.
- Apply: carries out or uses a procedure. Executing, implementing.
- Analyze: breaks material into parts, sees how they relate. Differentiating, organizing, attributing.
- Evaluate: judges based on criteria and standards. Checking, critiquing.
- Create: puts elements together into a new whole. Generating, planning, producing.
- The 1956 levels, from the base: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation.
Ways to use it in teaching
Have students write one learning outcome at each level for the same topic, with a process from the drawing as the verb. Then swap: which level does a partner’s outcome really reach?
Show the 1956 comparison, the second drawing, and ask why the revision put creating above evaluating, the one change in the order of the levels.
Set it beside its affective counterpart, drawn as its pair. The cognitive levels rise by complexity, the affective ones by how fully a value is internalized; ask students what each ordering assumes about learning.
Assign Krathwohl (2002), a short overview of the revision. Every level name and cognitive process on the drawing is from its Table 3, and the descriptions shorten its definitions; it also sets out the Knowledge dimension that the comparison figure only mentions.
Sources
- Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212–218. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_2
