Benjamin Bloom

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Benjamin Bloom (21 February 1913 - September 13, 1999) was an American educational psychologist who made significant contributions to the classification of educational objectives and the theory of mastery learning.

[edit] Bloom's theory

Benjamin Bloom was an influential academic Educational Psychologist. His main contributions to the area of education involved mastery learning, his model of talent development, and his Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the cognitive domain

He focused much of his research on the study of educational objectives and, ultimately, proposed that any given task favours one of three psychological domains: cognitive, affective, or psychomotor. The cognitive domain deals with our ability to process and utilize (as a measure) information in a meaningful way. The affective domain is concerned with the attitudes and feelings that result from the learning process. Lastly, the psychomotor domain involves manipulative or physical skills.

Benjamin Bloom headed a group of Cognitive psychologists at the University of Chicago who developed a taxonomic hierarchy of cogntive-driven behavior deemed to be important to learning and measurable capablity. For example, an objective that begins with the verb "describe" is measurable but one that begins with the verb "understand" is not.

His classification of educational objectives, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956), addresses cognitive domain versus the psychomotor and affective domains of knowledge. Bloom’s taxonomy provides structure in which to categorize instructional objectives and instructional assessment. His taxonomy was designed to help teachers and Instructional Designers to classify instructional objectives and goals. The foundation of his taxonomy was based on the idea that not all learning objectives and outcomes are equal. For example, memorization of facts, while important, is not the same as the learned ability to analyze or evaluate. In the absence of a classification system (i.e., a taxonomy), teachers and Instructional Designers may choose, for example, to emphasize memorization of facts (which make for easier testing) than emphasizing other (and likely more important) learned capabilities.

Bloom’s taxonomy in theory helps teachers better prepare objectives and, from there, derive appropriate measures of learned capability.The fact is that most teachers have very little understanding of the meaning and intent of Bloom's Taxonomy (or subsequent taxonomys). Curriculum design, which is usually a State (i.e., governmental) practice, has not reflected the intent of such a taxonomy until the late 1990s. It is worth noting that Bloom was an American Academic and that his constructs will not be universally embraced.

A good example of the application of 'a' Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is in the curriculum of the Canadian Province of Ontario which provides for its teachers an integrated adaptation of Bloom's taxonomy. Ontario's Ministry of Education taxonomic categories are: Knowledge and Understanding; Thinking; Communication; Application. Every 'specific' learning objective, in any given course, can be classified according to the Ministry's taxonomy. However, Ontario's Ministry of Education failing is that it has not provided teachers with a reliable and systematic means for classifying the prescribed educational objectives. In fact, it would have been appropriate for the Ministry to classify the objectives in advance and thereby avoid confusion because taxonomic clasicication is not intuitive. Hence, while Bloom's Taxonomy is valid in theory, it can be rendered meaningless at the implementation stage. How? I do not know.