Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
In 1999, Dr. Lorin Anderson, a former learner of Bloom's, and his colleagues published an updated version of Bloom’s Taxonomy that takes into account a broader range of factors that have an impact on teaching and learning. This revised taxonomy attempts to correct some of the problems with the original taxonomy. Unlike the 1956 version, the revised taxonomy differentiates between “knowing what,” the content of thinking, and “knowing how,” the procedures used in solving problems.

The Knowledge Dimension is the “knowing what.” It has four categories: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. Factual knowledge includes isolated bits of information, such as vocabulary definitions and knowledge about specific details. Conceptual knowledge consists of systems of information, such as classifications and categories.

Procedural knowledge includes algorithms, heuristics or rules of thumb, techniques, and methods as well as knowledge about when to use these procedures. Metacognitive knowledge refers to knowledge of thinking processes and information about how to manipulate these processes effectively.

The Cognitive Process Dimension of the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy like the original version has six skills. They are, from simplest to most complex: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

Remembering
Remembering consists of recognizing and recalling relevant information from long-term memory.

Understanding
Understanding is the ability to make your own meaning from educational material such as reading and teacher explanations. The subskills for this process include interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.

Applying
The third process, applying, refers to using a learned procedure either in a familiar or new situation.

Analysis
The next process is analysis, which consists of breaking knowledge down into its parts and thinking about how the parts relate to its overall structure. Students analyze by differentiating, organizing, and attributing.

Evaluation
Evaluation, which is at the top of the original taxonomy, is the fifth of the six processes in the revised version. It includes checking and critiquing.

Creating
Creating, a process not included in the earlier taxonomy, is the highest component of the new version. This skill involves putting things together to make something new. To accomplish creating tasks, learners generate, plan, and produce.

According to this taxonomy, each level of knowledge can correspond to each level of cognitive process, so a learner can remember factual or procedural knowledge, understand conceptual or metacognitive knowledge, or analyze metacognitive or factual knowledge. According to Anderson and his colleagues, “Meaningful learning provides learners with the knowledge and cognitive processes they need for successful problem solving”. The following charts list examples of each skill of the Cognitive and Knowledge Dimensions.

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