What Is Bloom's Taxonomy?

Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical framework for classifying educational learning objectives by cognitive complexity, originally developed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1956, and significantly revised by Anderson and Krathwohl in 2001. The revised taxonomy organizes cognitive skills into six ascending levels: Remember (recalling facts and basic concepts), Understand (explaining ideas or interpreting meaning), Apply (using learned information in new situations), Analyze (breaking information into components and examining relationships), Evaluate (making judgments based on criteria and evidence), and Create (producing new or original work by combining learned elements). Instructional designers and training professionals use Bloom's Taxonomy as a practical tool for writing measurable learning objectives, designing assessments that test at appropriate cognitive levels, and ensuring course content progressively builds from foundational knowledge to higher-order critical thinking skills. In corporate training contexts, the taxonomy helps ensure that compliance training goes beyond simple recall to test actual decision-making ability, and that skills development programs include opportunities for application and creation rather than just information consumption. Well-designed LMS assessments should target multiple levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than relying solely on recognition-level multiple-choice questions.