Benjamin Bloom was an American psychologist and educator who made important contributions in the field of learning for mastery and in the taxonomy of educational goals.

His work has influenced many educational fields in the second half of the 21st century, as well as allowing a clearer understanding of children’s cognitive development.

Let’s see the life of this psychologist throughout a brief biography of Benjamin Bloom , in which we will know what his work and his theory of the taxonomy of educational objectives was.

Biography of Benjamin Bloom

This is a summary of Benjamin Bloom’s life, including his life and career path.

Children and Youth

Benjamin Samuel Bloom was born in Lansford, Pennsylvania, USA on February 21, 1913 . He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, who were fleeing from the discrimination that existed in the country towards this group at the beginning of the century.

From a young age he showed great curiosity about the world and knowledge. From his early years he was an insatiable reader, and if he was given the opportunity to research something he had read in a book, he did not hesitate to do so.

He was good at learning what he read. He also stood out for his reading ability and comprehension, to the extent that in the library where he borrowed books, he was not allowed to return them the same day he had taken them, since they did not believe he was capable of reading a whole book in less than a day.

Professional life

Benjamin Bloom received his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935, and later received his doctorate in Education in 1942 from the University of Chicago . He was admitted as a member of the University of Chicago Examination Board, serving in this capacity until 1943. After that, he became an examiner at the university until 1959.

He traveled the world and came to serve as an educational advisor to governments of countries that were in the process of developing and establishing democratic regimes, such as Israel and India.

Benjamin Bloom saw education as a process in which it was necessary to strive for academic achievement, but that this goes beyond the purely scholastic . Education was the path that, as long as it was carried out in the most appropriate way, allowed the extraction of all the human potential of the students. Education had to acquire an optimistic vision of the students, to see them as people who, if they proposed, could achieve their dreams.

Bloom’s very humane vision of education was a true source of inspiration for both other educational psychologists, pedagogues and philosophers of education , as well as those who had the opportunity to become his students.

Benjamin Bloom died in Chicago, Illinois, USA on September 13, 1999, at the age of 86.

Contributions as a researcher

Bloom had a profound influence on the field of educational psychology. His main contributions to this discipline were his ideas on learning for mastery, child cognitive development and his famous taxonomy of educational goals .

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His work focused on research in the study of education from a psychological perspective, specifically in relation to the cognitive, emotional and psychomotor aspects of learning.

Cognitive aspects refer to the students’ ability to manage in a useful way and give meaning to the information learned in the classroom. The emotional ones would be related to the feelings and attitudes that are generated as a result of the educational process. Finally, the psychomotor aspects are everything that involves physical skills, such as manipulating objects or exercising the body, in order to acquire new knowledge.

In 1956 he published his main work, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain , in which he set out his new educational model. This taxonomy was developed to help teachers in their teaching task, especially to define the pedagogical objectives to be achieved in the classroom .

The main idea of this taxonomy is that not all educational objectives should be treated and prioritized in the same way . For example, memorizing historical dates, although it has its importance, is not the same as analyzing the historical facts behind them, the political depth of the events that occurred and how they have shaped society up to the present day.

Taxonomy of educational objectives

This is a classification of different objectives that educators should propose to students. Benjamin Bloom divided these objectives into three domains:

1. Affective

It is the mastery of how people react emotionally to educational content. Within this domain there are five levels: receiving, responding, assessing, organizing and characterizing.

2. Psychomotor

It relates to the skills of physically manipulating objects , such as tools.

Although Bloom and his colleagues did not really give levels to this domain, several have been the educational psychologists who have given it sublevels. Some of these are: reflexes, fundamental movements, perception, physical skills, expert movements, and non-verbal communication.

3. Cognitive

This domain refers to the knowledge acquired in its most literal form , in addition to the understanding of new information and the critical capacity of thought.

Traditionally, education has sought to strengthen the skills within this domain, especially rote learning of what is explained in class.

In the taxonomy of educational objectives, this domain is subdivided into six levels, ranging from the lowest to the highest: knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation .

Some detractors of Bloom do agree with him in these categories that form the cognitive domain, but they do not consider this to be the real hierarchy, changing the order or considering that most of these levels are really sub-components that acquire the same importance in the learning process.

Legacy of Benjamin Bloom

This psychologist has come to be considered a guru in the field of educational psychology. Furthermore, was a prominent educational activist . He took an important role in founding the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

When he was in the department of education at the University of Chicago, he developed the MESA (Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis) program with the aim of preparing schoolchildren with very striking critical thinking skills a specialized type of education, in order to make the most of their potential.

Bibliographic references:

  • Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.