bloom's taxonomy - learning domains
Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains - Cognitive, Affective, Psychomotor Domains - design and evaluation toolkit for training and learning
Bloom's Taxonomy, (in full: 'Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains', or strictly speaking: Bloom's 'Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives') was initially (the first part) published in 1956 under the leadership of American academic and educational expert Dr Benjamin S Bloom. 'Bloom's Taxonomy' was originally created in and for an academic context, (the development commencing in 1948), when Benjamin Bloom chaired a committee of educational psychologists, based in American education, whose aim was to develop a system of categories of learning behaviour to assist in the design and assessment of educational learning. Bloom's Taxonomy has since been expanded over many years by Bloom and other contributors (notably Anderson and Krathwhol as recently as 2001, whose theories extend Bloom's work to far more complex levels than are explained here, and which are more relevant to the field of academic education than to corporate training and development).
Where indicated Bloom's Taxonomy tables are adapted and reproduced with permission from Allyn & Bacon, Boston USA, being the publishers and copyright owners of 'Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives' (Bloom et al 1956).
Most corporate trainers and HR professionals, coaches and teachers, will benefit significantly by simply understanding the basics of Bloom's Taxonomy, as featured below. (If you want to know more, there is a vast amount of related reading and references, listed at the end of this summary explanation.)
Bloom's Taxonomy was primarily created for academic education, however it is relevant to all types of learning.
Interestingly, at the outset, Bloom believed that education should focus on 'mastery' of subjects and the promotion of higher forms of thinking, rather than a utilitarian approach to simply transferring facts. Bloom demonstrated decades ago that most teaching tended to be focused on fact-transfer and information recall - the lowest level of training - rather than true meaningful personal development, and this remains a central challenge for educators and trainers in modern times. Much corporate training is also limited to non-participative, unfeeling knowledge-transfer, (all those stultifyingly boring powerpoint presentations...), which is reason alone to consider the breadth and depth approach exemplified in Bloom's model.
You might find it helpful now to see the Bloom Taxonomy overview. Did you realise there were all these potential dimensions to training and learning?
development of bloom's taxonomy
Benjamin S Bloom (1913-99) attained degrees at Pennsylvania State University in 1935. He joined the Department of Education at the University of Chicago in 1940 and attained a PhD in Education in 1942, during which time he specialised in examining. Here he met his mentor Ralph Tyler with whom he first began to develop his ideas for developing a system (or 'taxonomy') of specifications to enable educational training and learning objectives to be planned and measured properly - improving the effectiveness of developing 'mastery' instead of simply transferring facts for mindless recall. Bloom continued to develop the Learning Taxonomy model through the 1960's, and was appointed Charles H Swift Distinguished Service Professor at Chicago in 1970. He served as adviser on education to several overseas governments including of Israel and India.
Bloom's (and his colleagues') initial attention was focused on the 'Cognitive Domain', which was the first published part of Bloom's Taxonomy, featured in the publication: 'Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives: Handbook 1, The Cognitive Domain' (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, Krathwohl, 1956).
The 'Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives: Handbook II, The Affective Domain' (Bloom, Masia, Krathwohl) as the title implies, deals with the detail of the second domain, the 'Affective Domain', and was published in 1964.
Various people suggested detail for the third 'Psy