There are three main domains of learning and all teachers should know about them and use them to construct lessons. These domains of learning are the cognitive (thinking), the affective (social/emotional/feeling), and the psychomotor (physical/kinesthetic) domain, and each one of these has a taxonomy associated with it. Taxonomy is simply a word for a classification. All of the taxonomies below are arranged so that they proceed from the simplest to more complex levels.
The Cognitive Domain
The basic idea behind the cognitive domain involves the knowledge and intellectual skills that a student will develop. There are six categories involved within the cognitive domain, and they are usually considered to be stages of difficulty. Usually, the first category must be mastered before a student can move on to the next one. These categories are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
The Affective Domain
The affective domain deals with a person’s emotions and how they are handled. Like the cognitive domain, there are major categories involved with this domain. They are receiving phenomena, responding to phenomena, valuing, organization, and internalizing values.
The Psychomotor Domain
The third and final domain of Bloom’s taxonomy involves physical movement, coordination, and motor-skill usage. Developing the skills involved with the psychomotor domain takes practice. There are seven major categories involved with this taxonomy: perception, set, guided response, mechanism, complex overt response,adaptation, and origination.