Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Volume 12, Number 2

Following the 1948 Convention of the American Psychological Association, B. S. Bloom1 took the lead in formulating a classification of "the goals of the educational process" by identifying three "domains" of educational activities: the cognitive domain, the affective domain, and the psychomotor domain. The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual attitudes and skills. The affective domain includes the manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such as feelings, values, appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations, and attitudes. The psychomotor domain concerns the development of manual or physical skills. Eventually, Bloom and his coworkers established a hierarchy of educational objectives, generally referred to as "Bloom's Taxonomy," which attempts to arrange these objectives from the simplest to the most complex behaviors. Although the divisions are not absolutes, and other systems or hierarchies have been devised, Bloom's taxonomy is easily understood and widely applied.