Bloom's Taxonomy: Its Evolution, Revision, and Use in the Field of Education

Abstract

INTRODUCTION At the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1948, Dr. Benjamin Bloom, then only 35 years of age but already college examiner at the prestigious University of Chicago, met informally with other college and university and set forth in motion the production of the of Educational Objectives, The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. The hierarchical classification system listed in this handbook is more commonly known as Taxonomy (Appendix A). More than 50 years after the handbook's publication in 1956, it continues to be widely used today in the disciplines of teaching, writing, and learning theory, as well as content development, instruction, and assessment. The relevance of Bloom's can be explored through the initial development of the handbook, the use and misuse of the taxonomy over the past half century, and its recent revision including any possible effect on the future of planning and development. A point of clarification: taking cue from Bloom's Taxonomy: A Forty-Year Retrospective (Anderson & Sosniak, 1994), it is important that we differentiate between the Handbook and the Taxonomy. The term 'Taxonomy' is used when... [referring] to the classification system itself. The term 'Handbook' is used when the reference is to the publication in which the classification system (pp. vii-viii). Throughout this work, the above terminology will be used in like manner. DEVELOPMENT OF THE HANDBOOK, 1948-1956 The informal 1948 APA meeting of college examiners, mentioned above, led to series of informal conferences which convened on an annual basis at various universities from 1949 to 1953. Although not all were present at every meeting, total of 34 participants were involved in the development of the Handbook (Appendix B). At these meetings, it was decided that complete taxonomy would be divided into the following three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The participants agreed that work regarding the cognitive domain should be the first to be developed and published laying the groundwork for the remaining domains. This work was meant to convey a theoretical framework which could be used to facilitate communication among examiners (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956, p. 4). Although some of the participants initially disputed the use of the term taxonomy, by the time the Handbook was to be published, consensus had been reached that the term was indeed appropriate to the efforts of the committee. After an initial draft of the Handbook was completed, members of the committee shared it with professional colleagues, graduate students, test developers, and educational practitioners. The comments and critiques of these persons were carefully considered and many new ideas were incorporated into subsequent revisions of the draft. Even more suggestions were made when formal presentation of the concepts that would be presented in the Handbook was made at the APA convention held in Chicago in 1951. Following this presentation, work and revisions resumed as the committee continued their informal annual meetings. In 1954, the publishing house of Longmans, Green, and Company agreed to print 1,000 copies of preliminary edition of the Handbook. The committee then sent this preliminary edition to large group of teachers, school administrators, college and university professors, educational researchers, and directors. Unfortunately, this action did not solicit as many helpful comments as had been hoped (Krathwohl, 1994). However, using as many professional opinions as they possibly could, the committee prepared the final edition for publication. The differences between the preliminary and final editions of the Handbook are closely examined by Lauren Sosniak in 1994 publication. Sosniak notes that the word curriculum appears far more frequently in the final edition than in the preliminary edition. …