Benjamin Bloom

Who is Benjamin Bloom?

Benjamin Bloom was a Jewish-American educational phycologist who made contributions to the theory of mastery learning.

Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational phychologist who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour.

Theory:

Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation.

Blooms saw the original taxonomy as more than a measurement tool. He believed it would serve as a common language about learning goals to facilitate communication across subject matter and grade levels. Furthermore it was a means for determining educational objectives, activities, assessments and curriculum.

The following table consists of verbs that correspond to each cognitive domain.

Knowledge	Arrange	define	Duplicate
Comprehension	Classify	Describe	Discuss
Application	Apply	Demonstrate	Dramatize
Analysis	Analyse	Appraise	Calculate
Synthesis	Arrange	Assemble	Collect
Evaluation	Appraise	Argue	Assess

How the theory can be used in the teaching of the TAS stage 5 specialization:

Across all specialisations but specifically the TAS stage 5 specialisation, teachers can use Blooms theory to taxonomize students into different levels of learning ability. When providing task sheets teachers can change the wording of some of the questions to meet the learning abilities of the class as a whole. When creating marking criteria again teachers can use the appropriate verbs to describe what they expect from the differing levels of achievement.

References for further understanding:

Lorin W Anderson, Lauren A. Sosniak. 1994. Bloom’s taxonomy: a forty year retrospective. Year of

the National Society for the Study of Education.

Lorin W Anderson. 2001. A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: a revision of Blooms taxonomy of educational objectives.

William Robert Dawson. 1998. Extensions to Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives.