Learning in Bloom

“For at least a century, the way to approach the measurement and description of students’ academic achievement had been to expect a normal distribution and then to compare students’ performance. If the student made few mistakes they received an A and if the student missed to many they would receive an F. Benjamin Bloom looked at the matter differently. He recognized it was important that students not be compared but they should be helped to achieve the goal of the curriculum they were studying”. This was said by a man who was once a student of Bloom’s, his name is Eisner and he now works with the International Bureau of Education. Another source to find out information about Bloom was the University of South Alabama, they told how it all began. Benjamin Bloom was born in Lansford, Pennsylvania on February 21, 1913. He received his master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935. Seven years later after moving to Chicago, he received his doctrine in education. From 1940 to 1943. In 1943 to 1959, Bloom served as a staff member on the board of examinations and then went on to be the University examiner developing tests to determine if undergraduates had mastered the material needed to achieve their bachelor’s degree. Benjamin Bloom sought a way to better understand learning behaviors and how people absorb knowledge. What Bloom came up with was the “Three domains of learning,” which are cognitive learning, affective learning and psychomotor learning. In 1948, Bloom and a group of his colleagues with the American Psychological Association began discussions that led to the taxonomy of educational goals, a system of classification that l is usually referred to as “Bloom’s Taxonomy.” Bloom’s taxonomy is comprised of six levels moving from simple to complex as follows: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Many of Bloom’s teaching ideals are still in practice today in lesson plans in classrooms all over. Bloom believed and demonstrated that all children can learn and Blooms taxonomy has been linked to mastery learning which is used to continually expand students’ learning in a series of modules or teacher instructions that go more in depth as you progress through the course. Cognitive learning classifies what students know and how the organize their thoughts and ideas. In 1956 Bloom authored the book Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain, which deals with the development and knowledge of intellectual skills. Bloom sets forth a hierarchy of learning, starting with factual knowledge while also taking you through comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. In 1964 Bloom co-authored the second book in the series deals with affective learning which deals with student’s emotions, interests, attitude and