Benjamin Bloom

Benjamin Bloom (February 21, 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. He recieved the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Education, and his research, which showed that educational settings and home environments can foster human potential, transformed education.

Life

Benjamin S. Bloom was born on 21 February 1913 in Lansford, Pennsylvania, and died on 13 September 1999. Bloom was especially devoted to his family and his nieces and nephews. He had been a handball champion in college and taught his sons both handball and Ping-Pong, chess, compose and type stories, as well as invent.

He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935 and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Chicago in March 1942. He became a staff member of the Board of Examinations at the University of Chicago in 1940 and served in that capacity until 1943, at which time he became university examiner, a position he held until 1959.

He served as educational adviser to the governments of Israel, India and numerous other nations.

What Bloom had to offer his students was a model of an inquiring scholar, someone who embraced the idea that education as a process was an effort to realize human potential, and even more, it was an effort designed to make potential possible. Education was an exercise in optimism. Bloom’s commitment to the possibilities of education provided inspiration for many who studied with him.

Benjamin Bloom died Monday, Sept. 13, 1999 in his home in Chicago. He was 86.

Work

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 cognitive-driven behavior deemed to be important to learning and measurable capability. 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. It was designed to provide a more reliable procedure for assessing students and the outcomes of educational practice. 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.

Taxonomy of educational objectives

The Bloom's Wheel, according to the Bloom's verbs and matching assessment types. The verbs are all feasible and measurable.

The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, often called Bloom's Taxonomy, is a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for students (learning objectives). Bloom's Taxonomy divides educational objectives into three "domains:" Affective, Psychomotor, and Cognitive. Like other taxonomies, Bloom's is hierarchical, meaning that learning at the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels (Orlich, et al. 2004). A goal of Bloom's Taxonomy is to motivate educators to focus on all three domains, creating a more holistic form of education.

Affective

Skills in the affective domain describe the way people react emotionally and their ability to feel another living thing's pain or joy. Affective objectives typically target the awareness and growth in attitudes, emotion, and feelings. There are five levels in the affective domain moving through the lowest order processes to the highest:

Receiving

The lowest level; the student passively pays attention. Without this level no learning can occur.

Responding

The student actively participates in the learning process, not only attends to a stimulus, the student also reacts in some way.

Valuing

The student attaches a value to an object, phenomenon, or piece of information.

Organizing

The student can put together different values, information, and ideas and accommodate them within his/her own schema; comparing, relating and elaborating on what has been learned.

Characterizing

The student has held a particular value or belief that now exerts influence on his/her behavior so that it becomes a characteristic.

Psychomotor

Skills in the psychomotor domain describe the ability to physically manipulate a tool or instrument like a hand or a hammer. Psychomotor objectives usually focus on change and/or development in behavior and/or skills.

Bloom and his colleagues never created subcategories for skills in the psychomotor domain, but since then other educators have created their own psychomotor taxonomies. For example, Harrow wrote of the following categories:

Reflex movements

Reactions that are not learned.

Fundamental movements

Basic movements such as walking, or grasping.

Perception

Response to stimuli such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or tactile discrimination.

Physical abilities

Stamina that must be developed for further development such as strength and agility.

Skilled movements

Advanced learned movements as one would find in sports or acting.

No discursive communication

Effective body language, such as gestures and facial expressions.

Cognitive

Categories in the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)

Skills in the cognitive domain revolve around knowledge, comprehension, and "thinking through" a particular topic. Traditional education tends to emphasize the skills in this domain, particularly the lower-order objectives. There are six levels in the taxonomy, moving through the lowest order processes to the highest:

Knowledge

Exhibit memory of previously-learned materials by recalling facts, terms, basic concepts and answers

• Knowledge of specifics - terminology, specific facts
• Knowledge of ways and means of dealing with specifics - conventions, trends and sequences, classifications and categories, criteria, methodology
• Knowledge of the universals and abstractions in a field - principles and generalizations, theories and structures

Questions like: What is...?

Comprehension

Demonstrative understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating main ideas

• Translation
• Interpretation
• Extrapolation

Questions like: How would you compare and contrast...?

Application

Using new knowledge. Solve problems to new situations by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different way

Questions like: Can you organize _______ to show...?

Analysis

Examine and break information into parts by identifying motives or causes. Make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations

• Analysis of elements
• Analysis of relationships
• Analysis of organizational principles

Questions like: How would you classify...?

Synthesis

Compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions

• Production of a unique communication
• Production of a plan, or proposed set of operations
• Derivation of a set of abstract relations

Questions like: Can you predict an outcome?

Evaluation

Present and defend opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria

• Judgments in terms of internal evidence
• Judgments in terms of external criteria

Questions like: Do you agree with.....?

Some critique on Bloom's Taxonomy's (cognitive domain) admit the existence of these six categories, but question the existence of a sequential, hierarchical link (Paul, R. (1993). Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world (3rd ed.). Rohnert Park, California: Sonoma State University Press.). Also the revised edition of Bloom's taxonomy has moved Synthesis in higher order than Evaluation. Some consider the three lowest levels as hierarchically ordered, but the three higher levels as parallel. Others say that it is sometimes better to move to Application before introducing Concepts. This thinking would seem to relate to the method of Problem Based Learning.

Studies in early childhood

In 1964, Bloom published Stability and Change in Human Characteristics. That work, based on a number of longitudinal studies, led to an upsurge of interest in early childhood education, including the creation of the Head Start program. His convictions about environmental influences led, ultimately, to the impact that his work had in establishing the Head Start Program in the United States. He was invited to testify to the Congress of the United States about the importance of the first four years of the child’s life as the critical time to promote cognitive development. His testimony had an impact in promoting and maintaining funding for this program. He argued that human performance was often a reflection of social privilege and social class. Children who enjoyed the benefits of habits, attitudes, linguistic skills and cognitive abilities available to the more privileged members of society were likely to do well at school. To confer additional privileges on those who already had a head start was to create an array of inequities that would eventually exact extraordinary social costs. He further stated that since environment plays such an important role in providing opportunity to those already privileged, it seemed reasonable to believe that by providing the kind of support that the privileged already enjoyed to those who did not have it, a positive difference in their performance would be made.

Bloom showed that many physical and mental characteristics of adults can be predicted through testing done while they are still children. For example, he demonstrated that 50 percent of the variations in intelligence at age 17 can be estimated at age 4. He also found that early experiences in the home have a great impact on later learning.

Bloom summarized his work in a 1980 book titled All Our Children Learning, which showed from evidence gathered in the United States and abroad that virtually all children can learn at a high level when appropriate practices are undertaken in the home and school.

In the later years of his career, Bloom turned his attention to talented youngsters and led a research team that produced the book Developing Talent in Young People, published in 1985.

Mastery Learning

In 1985 Bloom conducted a study suggesting that at least 10 years of hard work (a "decade of dedication"), regardless of genius or natural prodigy status, is required to achieve recognition in any respected field. This shows starkly in Bloom's 1985 study of 120 elite athletes, performers, artists, biochemists and mathematicians. Every single person in the study took at least a decade of hard study or practice to achieve international recognition. Olympic swimmers trained for an average of 15 years before making the team; the best concert pianists took 15 years to earn international recognition. Top researchers, sculptors and mathematicians put in similar amounts of time.

Bloom’s research on ‘giftedness’ undermines the typical conception of giftedness. ‘Giftedness’ typically connotes the possession of an ability that others do not have. A gift suggests something special that is largely the result of a genetically conferred ability. While Bloom recognized that some individuals had remarkable special abilities, the use of such a model of human ability converted the educators’ role from inventing ways to optimize human aptitude into activities mainly concerned with matters of identification and selection. The latter process was itself predicated on the notion that cream would rise to the top. The educator’s mission, Bloom believed, was to arrange the environmental conditions to help realize whatever aptitudes individuals possessed. Bloom discovered that all children can learn at a high level when appropriate practices, attention and support are undertaken in the home and school. Champion tennis players, for example, profited from the instruction of increasingly able teachers of tennis during the course of their childhood. Because of this and the amount of time and energy they expended in learning to play championship tennis, they realized goals born of guidance and effort rather than raw genetic capacity. Attainment was a product of learning, and learning was influenced by opportunity and effort. It was a powerful and optimistic conception of the possibilities that education can provide.

Bloom’s message to the educational world was to focus on target attainment and to abandon a horse-race model of schooling that has as its major aim the identification of those who are swiftest. Speed is not the issue, he argued, achievement or mastery is, and it is that model that should be employed in trying to develop educational programs for the young. Mastery learning was an expression of what Bloom believed to be an optimistic approach to the realization of educational goals.

Some of the effects of mastery learning include:

• Increased student self-assurance.
• Reduced competition and encouraged cooperation among students;

that is, students were enabled to help one another

• Assessments as learning tools rather than official grades
• Second chance at success for students.

Major publications

• Bloom, Benjamin S. (1980). All Our Children Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070061181 ISBN 9780070061187.
• Bloom, Benjamin S. (1984) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longmans, Green. OCLC 179029.
• Bloom, B. S., & Sosniak, L. A. (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0345319516 ISBN 9780345319517.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; pp. 201-207; B. S. Bloom (Ed.) Susan Fauer Company, Inc. 1956.
• A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing—A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives; Lorin W. Anderson, David R. Krathwohl, Peter W. Airasian, Kathleen A. Cruikshank, Richard E. Mayer, Paul R. Pintrich, James Raths and Merlin C. Wittrock (Eds.) Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 2001

External Links

• Learning Domains or Bloom's Taxonomy.
• Obituary in The University of Chicago Chronicle.
• THE TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES.
• Bloom's Taxonomy.

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