Benjamin S. Bloom: More Than a Taxonomy

Benjamin S. Bloom spent his career as an educational psychologist searching for the keys to developing students who felt successful in school and beyond its walls. During his professional journey, he created, monitored, and adjusted the taxonomies for the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Through his research and the research of others, Bloom was able to identify elements of teaching and learning that could lead students to feeling successful and believing in their abilities. Though he may be best associated with Bloom’s Taxonomy of the cognitive domain, there was never a question that success would be achieved when the stages of the affective and psychomotor domains blended with the cognitive in the learning process. The real success for Bloom was assisting educators in understanding the elements of teaching and learning that would make mastery learning not only a concept but a reality.