Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., Airasian, P. W., Cruikshank, K. A., Mayer, R. E., Pintrich, P. R., et al. (Eds.). (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York, NY: Addison Wesley Longman.

This book presents an update to Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Bloom's attempts to divide the processes involved in cognition to identify so-called "low order" thinking from "high order" thinking. Lower order thinking involves simple recall of knowledge, while higher order thinking involves the abilitie to make judgements, create, and bring together ideas from disparate domains.

In this update, the taxonomy takes on a new dimension: knowledge. Each of the aspects of cognitive process is further sub-divided into levels of knowledge (or levels of knowing): factual (being able to name), conceptual, procedural (knowing how to do), and meta-cognitive (reflecting on ones own knowledge). This two-dimension framework is presented in grid form to facilitate instructional planning:

The purpose of this update is to capture changes in how cognition is viewed that have occured since Bloom's taxonomy was originally introduced in the mid-1950s and to reintroduce today's instructional planners to the taxonomy, given the renewed interest in addressing higher order thinking.

Contributed by: William Doane wd213355@albany.edu