Learning Taxonomies in Medical Simulation

Benjamin Bloom and colleagues published the in 1956, the foundation for educational objectives and learning goals. Bloom's taxonomy created a common language such that learning materials could be compared between institutions and provided a way to assess what a curriculum offered within the learning domain. Based on this work, the 3 learning domains are cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. See Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's taxonomy is specific to the cognitive domain and presents a hierarchical structure with 6 levels of learning: : 1. Knowledge (lowest level). 2. Comprehension. 3. Application. 4. Analysis. 5. Synthesis. 6. Evaluation (highest level). Bloom's taxonomy was revised in 2001 by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl (one of the authors of the original taxonomy). Regarding this revision, Krathwohl commented on how Bloom's taxonomy went from a unidimensional ladder of cognitive processes to a 2-dimensional structure of mental processes and types of knowledge. The knowledge dimension consisted of factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge subtypes. The dimension of cognitive processes resembled the original taxonomy, with 6 levels, but the names were changed from nouns to verbs: 1. Remember. 2. Understand. 3. Apply. 4. Analyze. 5. Evaluate. 6. Create . Since Bloom's taxonomy was developed, additional taxonomies have been created for the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. New taxonomies will continue to be designed to fit broader educational needs. One example of another taxonomy is Fink's , which also consists of 6 parts: 1. Learning how to learn. 2. Foundational knowledge. 3. Application. 4. Integration. 5. Human dimension. 6. Caring . These taxonomies can help guide the creation of curriculum learning objectives and reveal what a curriculum might be lacking. In medical education, learning objectives often focus on knowledge more than the other domains. The medical simulation field comprises various educational tools and approaches that can reach learning objectives across all 3 academic domains.