CH A P T E R ON E
The Need for a Revision
of Bloom’s Taxonomy
In 1956, a small, somewhat technical volume was published underthe title, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, The Classification of
Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956).
In the 50-plus years since its publication, “Bloom’s Taxonomy,” as it is
frequently referred to in deference to Benjamin Bloom, the work’s editor,
has been used by educators in virtually every subject area at virtually every
grade level. The expressed purpose of the taxonomy was to develop a codifi-
cation system whereby educators could design learning objectives that have
a hierarchical organization.
You are reading about an attempt to build a taxonomy of educational
objectives. It is intended to provide for classification of the goals of our
educational system. It is expected to be of general help to all teachers,
administrators, professional specialists, and research workers who deal
with curricular and evaluation problems. (p. 1)
That Bloom’s Taxonomy is still used after some 50 years is a testament to
its contribution to education and psychology. Indeed, the 93rd yearbook
of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE), titled Bloom’s
Taxonomy: A Forty-Year Retrospective, documents the impact of the work:
Arguably, one of the most influential educational monographs of the
past half century is the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, The Clas-
sification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. Nearly
forty years after its publication in 1956 the volume remains a standard ref-
erence for discussions of testing and evaluation, curriculum development,
and teaching and teacher education. A search of the most recent Social
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Science Citation Index (1992) revealed more than 150 citations to the
Handbook. At a recent meeting of approximately 200 administrators
and teachers, the senior editor of this volume asked for a show of hands
in response to the question, “How many of you have heard of Bloom’s
Taxonomy?” Virtually every hand in the audience was raised. Few edu-
cation publications have enjoyed such overwhelming recognition for so
long. (Anderson & Sosniak, 1994, p. vii)
Those interested in a thorough discussion of the many uses and analyses
of Bloom’s Taxonomy should consult the 1994 NSSE yearbook. However, a
brief synopsis is useful here.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE USE OF BLOOM’S TAXONOMY
A scrutiny of the past 50-plus years in education indicates that Bloom’s
Taxonomy has had a significant, albeit uneven, influence on educational theory
and practice. According to Peter Airasian (1994), the taxonomy fitted nicely
into the instructional objectives movement that attained national prominence
after the publication of Robert Mager’s (1962) Preparing Instructional
Objectives. Mager’s book was explicitly designed to help those intending to
develop a methodology of programmed instruction and was based on the
premise that cognitive tasks could be ordered hierarchically. Airasian (1994)
notes that “one might think, given this affinity, that the taxonomy would have
been an influential tool in the development of programmed instructional
sequences. In one sense it was” (p. 87). As Edgar Dale (1967) explains, Bloom’s
Taxonomy became the structure around which many initial efforts at pro-
grammed instruction were organized. However, Airasian (1994) argues that
Bloom’s Taxonomy was ultimately replaced by Gagne’s (1977) framework
as the conceptual organizer for programmed instruction. Although Gagne’s
framework was less hierarchical than Bloom’s Taxonomy, it was more easily
translated into instructional practice.
Whereas Bloom’s Taxonomy had a minimal influence on curriculum,
it had a strong effect on evaluation. By 1970, Ralph Tyler’s model of evalu-
ation design was fairly well established. Specifically, Tyler presented an
objectives-based view of evaluation in which a program or an instructional
intervention was evaluated on the extent to which it had accomplished its
explicit goals (for a discussion of Tyler’s model, see Madaus & Stufflebeam,
1989). The more precisely goals were stated, the more precisely a program
could be evaluated. Bloom’s Taxonomy proved to be a powerful tool for
objectives-based evaluation in that it allowed for a level of detail in stating
goals that had not previously been readily attained.
Bloom’s Taxonomy also proved to be a valuable tool for those who
ascribed to the model of evaluation known as the “planning, programming,
2 The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
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