Taxonomies of Educational Objectives 

Marmar Mukhopadhyay 

Introduction

Learning involves acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviours. Learning can be deep (Marton and Saljo 1976) and sustainable - remembered long after and appropriately applied to various situations to solve problems, construct new hypotheses, and create new principles and products. Learning can be superficial and fragile - forgotten as soon as its immediate purpose has been fulfilled. Deep and superficial learning indicates that human learning can happen at multiple levels.

Since human learning happens at multiple levels, some classification is helpful. In the 1950s, a committee headed by Prof Benjamin S. Bloom of Chicago University (USA) pioneered the classification of learning into three domains - cognitive, affective and psychomotor. The Committee further classified different levels of learning within each domain; and probably, for the first time, used the word ‘Taxonomy’3 in education.

The report of the Bloom Committee, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, published in 1956, brought this new term into the lexicon of education. (More on 

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