ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY CITED YET LEAST READ BOOKS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

Benjamin Samuel Bloom (1913 –1999) was a American educational psychologist who made contributions to the classification of educational objectives and to the theory of mastery-learning. He also directed a research team which conducted a major investigation into the development of exceptional talent whose results are relevant to the question of eminence, exceptional achievement, and greatness.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives within education proposed in 1956 by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom who also edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals (referred to as simply "the Handbook" below). Although named for Bloom, the publication followed a series of conferences from 1949 to 1953, which were designed to improve communication between educators on the design of curricula and examinations.

It refers to a classification of the different objectives that educators set for students (learning objectives). Bloom's Taxonomy divides educational objectives into three "domains": Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor (sometimes loosely described as knowing/head, feeling/heart and doing/hands respectively). Within the domains, learning at the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels. A goal of Bloom's Taxonomy is to motivate educators to focus on all three domains, creating a more holistic form of education.

A mythology has grown around the taxonomy, possibly due to many people learning about the taxonomy through second hand information. Bloom himself considered the Handbook, "one of the most widely cited yet least read books in American education".

Key to understanding the taxonomy and its revisions, variations, and addenda over the years is an understanding that the original Handbook in 1956 was intended only to focus on one of the three domains (as indicated in the domain specification in title: The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook I: Cognitive Domain), but there was expectation that additional material would be generated for the other domains (as indicated in the numbering of the handbook in the title).

In 1971 he said, "Ideally each major field should have its own taxonomy in its own language - more detailed, closer to the special language and thinking of its experts, reflecting its own appropriate sub-divisions and levels of education, with possible new categories, combinations of categories and omitting categories as appropriate.”