The system was originally published under the title Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. Their initial intention was to help academics avoid duplicative or redundant efforts in developing different tests to measure the same educational objectives. The group sought to design a logical framework for teaching and learning goals that would help researchers and educators understand the fundamental ways in which people acquire and develop new knowledge, skills, and understandings. Educators have primarily focused on the Cognitive model, which includes six different classification levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The original taxonomy was organized into three domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. It is named after the committee’s chairman, Benjamin Bloom (1913–1999). Original Taxonomyīloom’s taxonomy was originally published in 1956 by a team of cognitive psychologists at the University of Chicago.
Educators have typically used Bloom’s taxonomy to inform or guide the development of assessments (tests and other evaluations of student learning), curriculum (units, lessons, projects, and other learning activities), and instructional methods such as questioning strategies. Bloom’s taxonomy is a classification system used to define and distinguish different levels of human cognition-i.e., thinking, learning, and understanding.