Educational Learning Theories: Chapter 10 Introduction

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Benjamin Samuel Bloom (1913-1999) was born on February 21, 1913 in Lansford, Pennsylvania. Bloom received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935. He went on to earn a doctorate’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1942, where he acted as first a staff member of the Board of Examinations (1940-1943), then a University Examiner (1943-1959), as well as an instructor in the Department of Education, beginning in 1944.

Bloom’s most recognized and highly regarded initial work spawned from his collaboration with his mentor and fellow examiner Ralph W. Tyler and came to be known as Bloom’s Taxonomy. These ideas are highlighted in his third publication, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook I, The Cognitive Domain. He later wrote a second handbook for the taxonomy in 1964, which focuses on the affective domain. Bloom’s research in early childhood education, published in his 1964 Stability and Change in Human Characteristics sparked widespread interest in children and learning and eventually and directly led to the formation of the Head Start program in America. Aside from his scholarly contributions to the field of education, Benjamin Bloom was an international activist and educational consultant. In 1957, he traveled to India to conduct workshops on evaluation, which led to great changes in the Indian educational system. He helped create the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, the IEA, and organized the International Seminar for Advanced Training in Curriculum Development. He developed the Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis (MESA) program at the University of Chicago. Benjamin Bloom died in his home in Chicago on September 13, 1999.