A Comparative Analysis of Achievement Standards in the Chemistry Subjects of 2015 and 2022 Revised National Curricula Based on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

This study analyzed and compared the achievement standards of the 2015 revised national curriculum (Chemistry I and II) and the 2022 revised national curriculum (Chemistry, Matter and energy, and World of chemical reactions) using Bloom’s revised taxonomy as an analytical framework. The purpose was to examine changes in the knowledge and cognitive process dimensions across the two curricula and to derive implications for future chemical education improvements. The findings are as follows: First, while the 2022 revised national curriculum showed a decrease in the surface number of achievement standards, the use of complex sentences led to increased ambiguity in specifying chemical content and concrete learning activities. Second, in general elective subjects — Chemistry I (2015) and Chemistry (2022) — 'conceptual knowledge' and 'understand' remained the most dominant categories. Although the 2022 'Chemistry' course showed a positive shift with an increased proportion of 'analyze,' both curricula lacked achievement standards at the 'evaluate' level, potentially hindering the development of students' higher-order thinking skills. Third, despite aiming for advanced learning, career elective subjects — 'Chemistry II' (2015) and 'Matter and energy' and 'World of chemical reactions' (2022) — were excessively biased toward 'conceptual knowledge' and 'understand.' High-level cognitive processes such as 'evaluate' and 'metacognitive knowledge' were rarely observed. This suggests that students may not be provided with sufficient opportunities to critically evaluate chemical knowledge or apply it to new contexts. Furthermore, no statistically significant difference was found between the two curricula, confirming that the cognitive structure of achievement standards maintains a conventional framework despite the intended goals of the revision. Based on these results, this study suggests that future chemical education curricula require clearer achievement standards and the intentional design of diverse knowledge dimension — including procedural and metacognitive knowledge — along with higher-order cognitive process dimension such as 'evaluate' and 'create.'