The three types of learning in education.

THE THREE TYPES OF LEARNING

Believing that there were more than one (1) type of learning, Benjamin Bloom and a committee of colleagues in 1956, identified three domains of educational activities; the cognitive, referring to mental skills; affective referring to growth in feeling or emotion; and psychomotor, referring to manual or physical skills. These terms were regarded as too technical by practicing teachers and so the domains were translated to simpler terms commonly used by teachers; knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA).

These domains are organized into categories or levels and arranged in hierarchal order from the simplest behavior to the complex behavior. To ensure that the learning outcomes are measurable, demonstrable, and verifiable, the outcomes should be stated as concrete and active verbs. In mid-nineties, a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson, reviewed the cognitive domain objectives and effected some changes. The two most prominent of these are (a) changing the names in the six subdivisions from noun to verb and (b) slightly re-arranging the order.