Educational Objectives in Ottoman Military Lower Secondary Schools: A Cognitive Level Analysis Based on the Revised Bloom Taxonomy

The first seeds of modern education in the Ottoman Empire emerged in military technical schools due to the necessity of army reform. Because traditional schools were inadequate in preparing students for higher education, military middle schools were established on January 9, 1875. Renowned for discipline and modern curricula, these schools surpassed civilian counterparts and played a critical role in training the Republic’s founding generation, notably Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This study presents a cognitive analysis of objectives in the 1905 military lower secondary schools curriculum using the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT). Through document analysis, 849 objectives were coded across RBT’s knowledge and cognitive process dimensions. Findings reveal that instructional objectives focused primarily on conceptual (56,90%) and procedural (32,86%) knowledge; understanding (53,00%) and application (19,32%) levels dominated cognitive processes. The complete absence of metacognitive knowledge and creation-level objectives indicates that the curriculum did not develop students’ self-regulation, strategic learning, and original production. Consequently, these schools effectively transmitted technical knowledge but remained limited in developing higher-order skills like analysis, evaluation, and creation. This study underscores the necessity of source-based comparative analyses to understand the historical impacts of educational policies and military pedagogy. Sharing this coding scheme enables future comparisons with programs from different years.