Serendipity35

Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives from 1956 created by a committee of educators chaired by Bloom. He edited the first volume of the 3 volume handbook - Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: the classification of educational goals.

This classification of the different objectives that educators set for students (learning objectives) is an education classic. The taxonomy divides educational objectives into three "domains": Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor (sometimes loosely described as knowing/head, feeling/heart and doing/hands respectively). One of the important goals of Bloom's Taxonomy was to motivate educators to focus on all three domains, creating a more holistic form of education.

In 2001, a revised version of the taxonomy was created. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, edited by Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krathwohl, was published.

The blog at you-can-teach-writing.com has a good list of lesser-known facts about the revision. I particularly like #10:

The authors don’t push standardized testing. Because national and state testing programs and performance scoring guides have high stakes consequences, they can have a negative impact on classrooms, the authors say. They refer to such testing programs as external assessments “because people who typically do not teach in classrooms mandate them (p. 248) [italics added]. Since such high stakes tests won’t disappear any time soon, the authors of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy say, “Teachers need to find ways of incorporating these external assessments into classroom instruction that are positive and constructive” (p. 233).