BENJAMIN BLOOM: BIOGRAPHY, THOUGHT, TAXONOMY, CONTRIBUTIONS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

Benjamin Bloom was an American educational psychologist born in February 1913 and died in September 1999. He was one of the most important figures of the 20th century in the field of educational psychology, especially thanks to his contributions on the classification of educational objectives.

Bloom investigated how educational and family environments influence the achievement of teaching objectives, and mastery in this area. In addition, she divided the educational objectives into three fields: affective, psychomotor, and cognitive. Her intention with this taxonomy was to help the education system focus on all three areas.

Benjamin Bloom

By: Yeruhamdavid

Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy has had a great influence in the field of formal education. Unlike other classifications, yours is hierarchical. This means that according to him, to acquire knowledge located at the highest part of the scale, it is first necessary to master those found in previous steps.

On the other hand, Bloom also conducted various investigations on mastery of learning. Among other things, it showed that the key to success is not the existence of a great innate intellectual capacity, but the constant effort and opportunities that are presented to the person.

Biography

Benjamin S. Bloom was born on February 21, 1913 in Lansford (Pennsylvania), a city in the United States. From his childhood, those who knew him said that he had a great curiosity about the world around him, and he began to investigate different topics by reading from a very young age.

Bloom was what today is considered a child of high abilities. He learned to read at a very young age, and was able to understand even very complex texts and remember everything he read. In his hometown, he had a reputation for checking out books from the public library and returning them the same day, having read them within a few hours.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he earned a graduate and master's degree. Later, he completed his doctorate in education at the University of Chicago, earning his degree in 1942. From 1940 to 1943 he served on the center's examination committee, and later became an examiner.

At the same time that he carried out this task, Benjamin Bloom also devoted himself to teaching classes on education and doing research on this subject. His main objective was to discover the best way in which education could help people to develop their full potential, a task to which he devoted himself during his years of teaching.

His fame in the field of education did not stop growing throughout his life, becoming an advisor to governments of countries such as India and Israel. In 1999, at the age of 86, Bloom passed away at his home in Chicago, after having revolutionized most of the existing theories about education so far.

Thought

Benjamin Bloom devoted himself primarily to the field of educational psychology. His goal was to find the best way to develop human excellence, which he believed had to be acquired through effort rather than being innate as was thought until then. Most of his studies were related to this idea.

Thus, in addition to his taxonomy of educational objectives and their classification into cognitive, affective and psychomotor (possibly his most famous contribution), Bloom also studied the different factors that influence mastery of a specific subject, and developed a model related to the talent development.

On the other hand, Benjamin Bloom believed that the first four years of a person's life are decisive for the formation of their future cognitive abilities. Because of this, he tried to discover what environmental, educational and nurturing factors could achieve the best results during this important period.

In addition to this, Bloom believed that differences in intelligence and other psychological factors do not vary much from the first four years of life.

Even so, for him, mastery in a certain area of ​​knowledge was not related to innate abilities, but to a sustained effort made over many years.

Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Goals is a classification of the different goals and abilities that educators can set for their students. Bloom divided all the possible objectives of education into three classes: affective, psychomotor, and cognitive.

Bloom's Taxonomy is hierarchical. This means that, to acquire the most complex knowledge of each type, it is necessary to have mastered the simplest. The objective of this classification was to help educators to be more efficient, and to focus on all three areas, so that education becomes more holistic.

Although Benjamin Bloom focused mainly on the cognitive dimension, his taxonomy has been later expanded to better explain the knowledge that can be achieved in the other areas.

Affective goals

Affective class skills have to do with the way in which a person reacts emotionally and their ability to feel the joy or pain of another living being. Today, these goals are related to emotional intelligence, since they have to do with the awareness of one's own emotions and those of others.

The five levels of affective objectives are the following: reception, response, assessment, organization, and characterization.

Reception

At the lowest level of affective goals, the student simply learns to pay attention. It is the most basic skill in any learning process: if a person is unable to control their attention, they cannot acquire new knowledge or skills.

Reply

The next step implies that the student, after having received a stimulus, is able to give a response of any kind.

Assessment

The third level of affective objectives implies that the student is capable of giving value to an object, a phenomenon, or information. At this point, the student begins to be able to motivate himself.

Organization

In the fourth level, the student is able to organize the values, information and ideas that he possesses in relation to a mental scheme that he has formed by himself. In this way, for the first time he can compare, relate and elaborate what he has learned, in such a way that his knowledge becomes increasingly complex.

Characterization

At the last level of affective learning, the student has been able to develop learning, value or belief to such an extent that it has become a fundamental pillar of his personality. Other people see it as one of its main characteristics.

Psychomotor goals

Psychomotor goals have to do with the acquisition of skills and changes in behavior, or the ability to manipulate tools or parts of the body in specific ways. Although Bloom never created a specific classification by levels, there are some developed later by other psychologists.

One of the most famous is Harrow's, which divides psychomotor abilities into the following levels:

- Reflex movements, that is, innate reactions that do not need to be learned.

- Fundamental movements, such as walking, or the "pincer" movement with the fingers.

- Perception, that is, the ability to respond to visual, auditory, kinesthetic or tactile stimuli.

- Physical skills, related to more complex movements of the body such as jumping, running or climbing.

- Skillful movements, which include all those related to the manipulation of tools or the performance of fine movements.

- Non-discursive communication, or the ability to show emotions and content through body language.

Cognitive goals

The cognitive objectives were the most developed in Bloom's original taxonomy. They have to do with knowledge and mental understanding about different subjects. They are the most worked in formal education. They are divided into six levels: knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

Knowledge

The lowest level consists of memorizing facts, terms, concepts and answers, without the need to understand them.

Understanding

One step beyond simple knowledge is understanding the ideas that have been memorized. For this, the person has to be able to interpret, compare and organize the facts that he has internalized, and relate them to those he already had.

Application

After understanding, the person must be able to apply their new knowledge, being able to solve problems with them.

Analysis

The fourth level involves the examination and decomposition of information into its most fundamental parts, seeking to understand the causes and hidden motives of each of the acquired knowledge. It also has to do with finding evidence and making inferences and assumptions.

Synthesis

The fifth level of cognitive taxonomy has to do with the ability to compile information in a novel way, producing a new classification and relationship between the facts that have been learned.

Evaluation

At the highest level of this taxonomy is the ability to present, evaluate and defend opinions, examining the validity of the facts and ideas that are presented and being able to form a valid judgment on them.

Other contributions

In addition to his famous taxonomy of knowledge, Bloom also revolutionized the ideas that existed in his day about talent and mastery in a certain area. In his research, he discovered that to become highly skilled in any field, the most determining factor was effort, not innate abilities.

On the other hand, Bloom also found that a person's educational environment up to four years of age will largely determine their abilities later on. For this reason, she conducted various investigations on how to foster the intelligence and curiosity of younger children, which are still influential today.

References

1. "Benjamin Bloom - Biography" in: JewAge. Retrieved on: May 01, 2019 from JewAge: jewage.org.
2. "Benjamin Bloom" in: New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved on: May 01, 2019 from New World Encyclopedia: newworldencyclopedia.org.
3. "Benjamin Bloom, 86, a Leader In the Creation of Head Start" in: New York Times. Retrieved on: May 01, 2019 from New York Times: nytimes.com.
4. "Bloom's Taxonomy" in: Britannica. Retrieved on: May 01, 2019 from Britannica: britannica.com.
5. "Benjamin Bloom" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: May 01, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.