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Educational Psychologist
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Merlin C. Wittrock and the Revision of Bloom's

Taxonomy
a b
DAVID R. KRATHWOHL & LORIN W. ANDERSON
a
Syracuse University, Hannah Hammond Professor of Education, Emeritus
b
University of South Carolina, Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Published online: 13 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: DAVID R. KRATHWOHL & LORIN W. ANDERSON (2010) Merlin C. Wittrock and the Revision of Bloom's
Taxonomy, Educational Psychologist, 45:1, 64-65, DOI: 10.1080/00461520903433562

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 EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 45(1), 64–65, 2010
Copyright

C Division 15, American Psychological Association
ISSN: 0046-1520 print / 1532-6985 online
DOI: 10.1080/00461520903433562

Merlin C. Wittrock and the Revision

of Bloom’s Taxonomy
David R. Krathwohl
Hannah Hammond Professor of Education, Emeritus
Syracuse University

Lorin W. Anderson
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
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University of South Carolina

Merl Wittrock, a cognitive psychologist who had proposed a generative model of learning,
was an essential member of the group that over a period of 5 years revised the Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives, originally published in 1956. This article describes the development
of that 2001 revision (Anderson and Krathwohl, Editors) and Merl’s contributions to that effort.

Anderson and Sosniak’s (1994) Bloom’s Taxonomy: A
Forty-Year Retrospective presented a comprehensive re-
examination of the Taxonomy in light of theoretical develop-
ments and empirical research since its publication in 1956. As
part of that retrospective, in “Reflections on the Taxonomy:
Its Past, Present, and Future,” Krathwohl (1994), an author
of the original Taxonomy, reminded readers that the original
Taxonomy was best seen as a heuristic for studying, under-
standing, and solving educational problems. Following his
review of what success it had had in this regard, he offered
several suggestions as to how the Taxonomy might be revised
and updated. That initiated a series of conversations in the
course of which Krathwohl and Anderson agreed to convene
a group for the purpose of revising the Taxonomy. Royal-
ties from the original edition were to be used to defray the
members’ expenses in a series of meetings. The group had
to be sufficiently small to allow substantive discussions at
the meetings and to assure that writing responsibilities were
equally shared. At each meeting the members would take
assignments that would move the group ahead for the next
meeting. Ultimately eight people accepted our invitations to
participate.
We believed that the group should have two or three mem-
bers who worked in cognitive psychology. The name of Merl
Wittrock immediately came to mind as someone who should
fill one of these slots. He turned out to be an excellent choice.
Correspondence should be addressed to David R. Krathwohl, Continuing
Education and Global Outreach, Syracuse University, 250 Huntington Hall,
Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: drkrathw@syr.edu
After meeting twice yearly for 5 years, the group published
a revision of the Taxonomy (Airasian et al., 2001).
Unlike the original Taxonomy that was unidimensional,
our early discussions, coupled with a review of alternative
classification systems, suggested that the revision should con-
tain two dimensions: knowledge and cognitive processes.
This caused us to realize that as a taxonomy of cognitive
processes, the noun forms used for the original category
names were inappropriate; they should have been verbs! So
we changed them to their verb forms (e.g., Application be-
came Apply). Merl was very active in making sure that we
used the right verbs. For example, he was a staunch sup-
porter of changing the original category title of Synthesize
to Create. Consistent with his model of generative learning
(Wittrock, 1974, 1990), Create goes beyond merely making
new knowledge fit with existing knowledge as Synthesize
suggests. Like his model, Create describes the active pro-
cesses of constructing meaning and, subsequently, plans of
action that need to be carried out. When viewed in this way,
it made sense to move Create to the top of the cognitive
process dimension, a move strongly endorsed by Merl. Also,
with his model’s emphasis on constructing meaning, Merl
championed the replacement of the original category title
Comprehension with Understand.
Likewise, we had to decide on the types of knowledge
to include in the knowledge dimension. Initially, we began
with declarative and procedural knowledge. We then sep-
arated declarative knowledge into factual and conceptual
knowledge. Eventually, we added metacognitive knowledge.
Merl argued strongly for this addition, suggesting that we use

Flavell’s framework (knowledge of strategy, task, and person)
to further unpack metacognitive knowledge.
So far as we can recall, Merl did not engage in the initial
writing of the chapters—the heaviest lifting in that depart-
ment was carried by Paul Pintrich who drafted chapter 4,
“The Knowledge Dimension,” and Richard Mayer who sim-
ilarly did chapter 5, “The Cognitive Process Dimension.”
However, Merl was a contributing author for chapter 3 (“The
Taxonomy Table”) as well as chapters 4 and 5. These chap-
ters were the heart of the substantive changes in the revision.
This meant that he was responsible for reviewing what these
authors wrote and working with them to make changes.
The group that revised the original Taxonomy took its re-
sponsibility very seriously. Merl, with the rest of us, engaged
in many lengthy discussions as to what form it should take,
what would be included, and what purpose it was intended to
Downloaded by [Universite De Paris 1] at 21:03 21 August 2013
serve. Like the vision of the original Taxonomy mentioned
earlier, Merl saw the revision as a framework—a heuristic—
that could be used to help teachers understand their craft and
to work continually to improve their practice.
Important in this effort was the inclusion in the revision
of six vignettes. Each was prepared by a classroom teacher
who laid out the plan of a unit, as well as how it would
be taught and assessed. These vignettes were analyzed by
members of the group using the revised Taxonomy. As Merl
WITTROCK AND REVISION OF BLOOM’S TAXONOMY 65
had suggested, by integrating teacher’s descriptions with the
group’s analysis, these vignettes were able to show classroom
teachers how the framework could be useful to them as well
as to curriculum designers.
In retrospect, we are grateful that Merl was an active
participant in our small group. Clearly the final product was
better because of his ideas, insights, and recommendations.
REFERENCES
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds). (2001). A taxonomy for learning,
teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational
objectives. New York: Longman.
Anderson, L. W., & Sosniak, L. A. (Eds.). (1994). Bloom’s taxonomy: A
forty-year retrospective. Ninety-third yearbook of the National Society
for the Study of Education, Part II. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Krathwohl, D. R. (1994). Reflections on the taxonomy: Its past, present, and
future. In L. W. Anderson & L. A. Sosniak (Eds.), Bloom’s taxonomy:
A forty-year retrospective. Ninety-third yearbook of the National Society
for the Study of Education, Part II (pp. 181–202). Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Wittrock, M. C. (1974). Learning as a generative process. Educational Psy-
chologist, 11, 87–95.
Wittrock, M. C. (1990). Generative processes of comprehension. Educa-
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