Revisiting Blooms Taxonomy

Ever since 1956 when Benjamin Bloom first published his hierarchy of education objectives, educators had an excellent tool for writing educational objectives.  Simply the list of action verbs provides a useful tool.  Over the years, it’s been update and revised to describe learning in action as shown in Bloom’s wheel.

The question is, does it go far enough for writing training objectives for today’s complex multitasking jobs.  Let’s take an example of preparing for winning the national spelling bee.  There are three basic things you need to be able to do.  1. Spell all words correctly.  2. Determine how to spell words from it’s etymology and language of origin. 3. Handle the pressure of performing in front of judges and a crowd.  You can work on all of these individually, but the real challenge is to do them at the same time.   So perhaps the objective should be written.  Recalls and spells correctly all words that have been memorized and figures out how to spell new words while handling the pressure of a crowd and judges.

I think there are lots of combinations on the job which should be kept together.  For example, operating a piece of machinery up to quality standards while following health and safety procedures.  Or..In a call center it’s using the phone, computer, policies and other information all at the same time.