Bloom’s Taxonomy of Education Essay

Benjamin Bloom developed Bloom’s Taxonomy in 1956. It identifies three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor; utilized to evaluate knowledge adapted by the learner. Each domain has categories that measure the level of the learners understanding. This paper gives a brief overview of each domain and explains how Bloom’s taxonomy applies to education and its use in nursing education. Blooms Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives divided into three categories. The first category is cognitive. The skills in cognitive involve knowledge, comprehension, critical thinking, and mental skills. In nursing education this category is assessed with the patient in exhibiting memory of previously learned material. For example, evaluating the patient with diabetes with a question, such as what are the health benefits of eating a low sugar diet and daily exercise to control blood sugar. The second category is Affective. The skills in affective revolves around receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and internalizing the information given to them. In nursing education this category the learners should be expected to be attentive to and be aware of learning, they listen with respect and remember the new information. Learners may experience acceptance or become committed to new information, learners also organize their values with prioritization. The learner should actively participate in learning. For example, asking questions and participates in discussion. Another example in the affective domain; how the diabetic deals with the fact that they have a disease that will need to be closely monitored for the rest of their life. The nurse will need to assess the alertness of the diabetic. Is the diabetic ready to listen to information about the disease and how to manage it? The third category is psychomotor. The skills in psychomotor domain are imitation, manipulation, precision, articulation, and naturalization. In nursing  education in this category the learner is expected to use sensory clues to imitate motor activity, follow instructions and practice after receiving information, the learner should be able to work unsupervised. The learner becomes more exacting in the process; they are able to do something correctly. The learners’ skills are developed and can modify actions to fit changes. The learner has a high level of routine skills without thinking too much about it. For example, the learner is able to detect the proper site for finger stick blood sugar testing, is able to withdraw an accurate dose of insulin with a syringe from a multi-dose vial, and is able to adjust glucose dosage to restore safe blood sugar level. In conclusion, many students are not taught to use critical thinking in contrast Blooms Taxonomy helps students including registered nurses to use higher level of thinking to improve learning. As registered nurses, we are life-long educators to our patients; in order to have success in our teaching we must utilize Blooms Taxonomy to assess our patient knowledge on what they are being taught. Reference Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com