Benjamin Bloom on American Education

Benjamin Bloom: The Development of American Education America is filled with a history of significant events that have taken place over time. It’s interesting to learn how specific events, people, places or subjects have greatly influenced our history in ways that still impact our lives today. Because I really value history as a subject, I have enjoyed researching Benjamin Bloom and the findings of his impact on American Education. He made many great contributions in the area of education.

A great deal of his research focused on the study of ducational objectives, many of which have been evaluated by numerous individuals, particularly teachers in the class room.

His extraordinary findings grasped the attention of many and are still utilized today. Benjamin S. Bloom was a Jewish-American psychologist. He was born in Lansford, Pennsylvania on February 21, 1913. Bloom had attended the Pennsylvania State University where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in 1935. Upon doing so, he then moved to the University of Chicago where he completed his Ph.

D. n education in 1942 and served as a member of the Board of Examinations. In 1944, he was appointed as the Instructor of Educational Psychology. Bloom died at the age of eighty six at his home in Chicago on September 13, 1999. He was survived by his wife and two his two sons, David and Jonathan. Bloom was a well known educational theorist and teacher. Together with a group of cognitive psychologists at the University of Chicago, Bloom developed his theory on taxonomy and his book of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook 1: The Cognitive Domain was published in 1956.

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His theory of taxonomy however is his most significant work.

What Is Benjamin Bloom Famous For

It promoted the concept that any any given task favors one of three psychological domains; cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The cognitive domain deals with the ability to process and utilize information in a meaningful way. The affective domain is concerned with the attitudes and feelings that result from the learning process. The psychomotor domain involves manipulative or physical skills. Similar to Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, Bloom believed that in each of his psychological domains there are levels of learning and an individual must be ble to perform at the lower level before they can advance.

The cognitive domain involves both knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. In 1956, Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior that are important to learning. Bloom discovered that over 95% of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest level possible. There are six major categories, starting from the simplest behavior to the most complex evaluation. This multi tiered odel of classifying thinking according to the six levels of complexity is known as Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The levels provide a basis for questioning that ensures that the students progress to their highest level on understanding. The keywords listed after the definition represent some of that tasks that the student can accomplish in each of the categories. The first level in Bloom’s Taxonomy is Knowledge: Remembering or recognizing something previously encountered without necessarily understanding, using, or cnanglng It. some 0T tne Keynuoras tnat Tall unaer Knowledge are: aennes, escribes, identifies, knows, matches, names.

The second level is known as Comprehension: Understanding the material being communicated without necessarily relating it to anything else. Some of the keywords that fall under this category are: distinguishes, estimates, explains, locate. The third tier is is called Application: Using general concepts to solve a problem. Some of the keywords that fall under application are: apply, demonstrate, interpret, sketch, solve. The fourth tier is called Analysis: The ability to break down material into its component parts. Keywords include: analyze, appraise, calculate, criticize, experiment, question.

The fifth tier is called Synthesis: The ability to put parts together to form a new whole. Key words include: arrange, assemble, collect, construct, manage, plan, prepare. The last tier, but not at all the least important, is Evaluation: The ability to Judge that value of material for a given purpose. Keywords may include: argue, assess, Judge,predict, rate, value, evaluate. In ED 205, we only talked briefly about Bloom and his taxonomy. However, when you really pick it apart and analyze all the steps, you as a future teacher begin to nderstand and assess the value of it for your children and how it can change their learning experience.

I personally value Bloom’s Taxonomy and I believe that it is a basic process that most people use to learn and remember a new concept. Almost all projects start with an idea where students are to create their own outline or idea and then evaluate and analyze that idea. Once the idea has been applied it will help the students understand the concept, which makes remembering it much easier. According to www. pro]ects. coe. uga. edu, “While it should be noted that other ducational taxonomies and hierarchical systems have been developed, Bloom’s Taxonomy which remains, even after nearly fifty years, the de facto standard. More and more educators are beginning to use this as a method of classifying educational goals and objectives in their classroom. Bloom’s Taxonomy has also been used by researchers and administrators, old and new, at any level of education necessary. This is truly what gave Bloom the ambition to link his name to all of these terms that he created in his new invention, for they will always be a part of his legacy, a forever widely used critical thinking tool.

In class we discussed why Bloom’s Taxonomy is a very helpful tool to use as you being to plan your own lessons as a teacher. Some teachers may argue that his taxonomy is no longer used in todays educational world because it is seen as ineffective. Everyone has their own arguments for different ideas. The fact that I am still learning about it today and can see the impact it can have on future educators and students such as myself, I know that this critical thinking strategy will always remain in my life as well as the lives of many others, no matter what their profession may be.