A PSYCHOMOTOR SKILLS EXTENSION TO BLOOM'S TAXONOMY OF EDUCATION OBJECTIVES FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract

Bloom's taxonomy of education objectives has been an important source for investigations of curriculum since its development. In the original taxonomy the authors addressed the issues of cognitive and affective objectives in education, and provided a hierarchy of kinds of capability in each of these domains that could be used as evidence of achievement. In addition, the hierarchy of capabilities provides a framework for correlating educational attainment with evidence of qualities that relate to abilities relevant to the performance of professional, or in the case of lower elements of the hierarchy, sub-professional work roles. The authors of the original taxonomy indicated that they believed that there are three domains relevant to educational outcomes. These are the cognitive, knowledge of and ability to work with information and ideas; the affective, ability to organise, articulate, and live and work by a coherent value system relevant to the capabilities achieved through education; and the psychomotor skills, ability to do acts relevant to the field of study. In engineering it is necessary for the student to develop skills working with the tangible stuff related to the discipline because the role of an engineer is to do either or both of development work of products and systems and to direct other people in the development and manufacture of products and systems. In roles where the engineer must personally perform work related to developmental experimentation, prototyping or contributions to maintenance and construction it is necessary for the engineer to have appropriately developed psychomotor skills to be able recognise and handle both test and developmental components and the equipment used to manipulate, work upon, or test those work pieces. In cases where the engineer's role is to direct the work of others it is important for the engineer to have appreciation of the tasks that the engineer calls upon those others to do and to have sufficient experience to understand the potential difficulties and dangers associated with the performance of the tasks. This appreciation will also provide a significant influence to the design activities of the engineer, as the engineer considers the usefulness and usability of the intended product. The paper will present a hierarchical taxonomy of psychomotor skills and discuss these skills specifically from the viewpoint of the needs of engineers.

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