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An essential goal of continuing education in nursing is to enhance nurses' ability to provide quality patient care (Bell, Pestka, & Forsyth, 2007 ). To meet this goal, learners need to transfer learned knowledge to actual practice. Achieving effective knowledge transfer requires familiarity with thinking paradigms in relation to specific subject content (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2010 ; Oermann & Gaberson, 2009 ). Educators can facilitate knowledge transfer by developing instructional designs that incorporate both subject content and cognitive processes related to the use of the subject content (Benner et al., 2010 ; Oermann & Gaberson, 2009 ).
Developing such instructional designs can be challenging. However, the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy provides a two-dimensional framework for meeting this educational need. This framework classifies cognitive learning objectives by knowledge types in relation to cognitive processes (Anderson et al., 2001 ). Examining educational content through the lens of knowledge types and cognitive processes helps educators to understand their intended objectives more precisely and guides them to develop appropriate or congruent instruction and assessment methods (Su, Osisek, & Starnes, 2004, 2005 ). This article discusses the relevance of the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy to continuing education and describes how to use the taxonomy to plan an educational session with an emphasis on promoting knowledge transfer.
The Original Bloom's Taxonomy
Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl (1956 ) published a framework for categorizing educational objectives as the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook I. Cognitive Domain. The taxonomy consists of six major cognitive categories that lie along a continuum from simple to complex. The categories are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Knowledge requires the ability to recall facts and specific information. Comprehension requires the ability to grasp the meaning of concepts. Application requires the ability to use an idea or a principle in a new situation. Analysis requires the ability to break information down into its component parts and identify relationships among those parts. Synthesis involves putting ideas and concepts together to form a new product. Evaluation involves the ability to make judgments against a set of criteria.
The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy
The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy is designed to provide a framework for classifying cognitive learning objectives not only through the six levels...