Benjamin Bloom

Benjamin Bloom (1913 to 1999) was an American educational psychologist and didactician who contributed to the classification of educational objectives and to the theory of mastery learning. Born in Lansford, Pennsylvania, to an immigrant Jewish family, he took his bachelor and master degrees at Pennsylvania State University in 1935, received a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1942 and joined its faculty in 1944. In 1956 he edited the first volume of The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which classified learning objectives and is known as Bloom taxonomy. His research on student achievement led to mastery learning, in which teachers organize material into short units, assess each one and give corrective work or enrichment accordingly, and he is also credited with the 2 Sigma Problem. He served as president of the American Educational Research Association in 1965 and 1966.