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This IssueLorin W. AndersonPublished online: 24 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Lorin W. Anderson (2002) This Issue, Theory Into Practice, 41:4, 210-211, DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip4104_1

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THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Winter 2002Promoting Thinking Through Peer Learning

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This Issue

ALMOST HALF A CENTURY since its publication in 1956, the Taxonomy of Educational Objec-

tives: The Classification of Educational Goals.Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (also known asBloom’s Taxonomy) remains one of the most fa-miliar educational books of all time. BenjaminBloom headed a group of educators who under-took the task of classifying education goals andobjectives. Bloom identified six levels of intellec-tual behavior within the cognitive domain, and nu-merous classroom teachers can still recite them:knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis,synthesis, and evaluation. It is not unusual to walkinto a classroom and see a poster of the taxonomiccategories (hand drawn or commercially produced)on a wall or bulletin board.

For about five years, from 1995 through 2000,a group of educators worked on a revision ofBloom’s Taxonomy. The decision to embark on arevision was not made easily. Preliminary discus-sions of the possibility of a revision began shortlyafter publication of the volume, Bloom’s Taxonomy:A Forty-Year Retrospective, in 1994 (Anderson &Sosniak, 1994). In the closing chapter, Krathwohl(1994) described some of the unsolved problemsof the original Taxonomy. These discussions—be-tween Krathwohl and Anderson—resulted in a de-cision to assemble a group of educators from acrossthe United States to engage in a more formal, ex-tended discussion. The group was to include peoplewith expertise in (a) cognitive psychology, (b) cur-riculum and instruction, and (c) testing, measure-

ment, and assessment. Those attending the firstmeeting agreed that a revision of the original Tax-onomy was worth attempting. As in the case of theoriginal work, the revision was a group effort.

In the revision we have retained many impor-tant aspects of the original Taxonomy but madechanges designed to increase the usefulness andusability of the original. For example, the originalframework emphasized testing, measurement, andevaluation, providing extensive examples of mul-tiple-choice items for each of the six major cate-gories covering a variety of subject matters (fully30% of its text). In contrast, the emphasis of therevised Taxonomy is on the uses of the framework(fully 56% of its text). Ten of the 17 chapters ofthe revised Taxonomy volume, in part or in whole,are devoted to examples of the framework’s appli-cation, making use of vignettes written by class-room teachers. Furthermore, whereas the examplesin the original Taxonomy were targeted toward thecollege and university level, those in the revisedTaxonomy (including the vignettes) focus on ele-mentary and secondary school levels. The purposeof this issue of Theory Into Practice is to summa-rize the work completed by the group, and to sug-gest how our efforts can help educators deal withsome of the major issues and problems confront-ing them today.

David Krathwohl begins the issue by review-ing the framework of the original Taxonomy andthen describing how the revised Taxonomy differsfrom the original. He discusses the newly developed

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Taxonomy Table, describes its two dimensions(cognitive processes and knowledge), and illustrateshow it can be used to make sense of a variety ofeducational objectives and standards.

Paul Pintrich focuses on the one type ofknowledge not included in the original Taxonomy,metacognitive knowledge. Based on the work ofFlavell, he identifies three types of metacognitiveknowledge: strategic knowledge, knowledge of cog-nitive tasks (including appropriate contextual andconditional knowledge), and self-knowledge. Follow-ing a discussion of each of these, Pintrich describesin some detail the implications of metacognitiveknowledge for learning, teaching, and assessing.

Next, Richard Mayer examines the six cate-gories that make up the cognitive process dimen-sion of the Taxonomy Table, as well as the 19specific cognitive processes that fit within them.He begins with a “tale of three learning outcomes”and moves to a discussion of two important dis-tinctions: retention versus transfer of learning, androte versus meaningful learning. He argues that amajor goal of this article is to examine how teachingand assessing can be broadened beyond an exclusivefocus on the cognitive process of Remember, andconcludes with several implications of his analysisfor teaching and assessing.

James Raths examines the revised TaxonomyTable as a tool for instructional improvement. Hebegins by posing the question, “What counts asimproved instruction?” After providing several an-swers to this question, he moves to a discussion ofhow the revised Taxonomy can assist in instruc-tional improvement efforts. He argues that by work-ing with the framework of the revised Taxonomy,teachers can begin to increase the alignment ofobjectives, instruction, and assessment, and raisethe learning target. Raths concludes with a discus-sion of the paradox of simplicity versus complexityin instructional improvement.

Chris Ferguson describes how the revised Tax-onomy was used to plan and implement a co-taught,integrated unit on the French Revolution. He de-scribes the way the statements of objectives, in-

structional activities, and assessments came togeth-er to bring this unit to life. He concludes by de-scribing three ways in which the revised Taxonomyhelped the teachers design the unit: providing acommon language; suggesting ways in which fac-tual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitiveknowledge can be integrated; and providing a dif-ferent perspective on the purpose, structure, andformat of classroom assessment.

P. Ann Byrd suggests that the revised Taxono-my has the potential of providing a common frame-work and language for connecting current teacherswith prospective teachers. She illustrates how the re-vised Taxonomy can lead to meaningful discussionsof the problem of confusing objectives with activ-ities, the role of assessment in connecting objec-tives with activities, and the essential link betweenteaching and learning.

Peter Airasian and Helena Miranda focus onthe assessment implications of the revised Taxon-omy. They discuss several challenges, namely, find-ing valid and reliable ways of assessing morecomplex cognitive processes, and finding valid andreliable ways of assessing metacognitive knowl-edge. Airasian and Miranda illustrate how the re-vised Taxonomy can be used to examine our currentapproaches to assessment and suggest improve-ments in this area.

Finally, I examine the key differences amongcontent coverage, opportunity to learn, and curric-ulum alignment. I suggest that the revised Taxon-omy provides a framework for analyzing curriculumalignment and illustrates the ways in which theTaxonomy Table can be used to estimate curricu-lum alignment. Unlike current methods of estimat-ing curriculum alignment, the revised Taxonomyenables educators to probe beneath the surface todetermine how objectives, activities, and assess-ments are similar in terms of the demands theyplace on student learning.

Lorin W. AndersonGuest Editor

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