Learning and Development: It’s not just about the cognitive domain.
(Image attribution: Nick Shackleton-Jones.)
Remember: Bloom’s taxonomy had emotional and physical siblings, too.
Most people know Bloom’s taxonomy as a ladder of cognitive skills:
Remembering, Understanding, and so on.
But what doesn’t often come up is that Bloom’s research didn’t stop there.
He and his colleagues also explored how we 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 when we learn — the affective domain — and how we 𝘢𝘤𝘵 — the psychomotor domain.
“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐋&𝐃 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐬.”
It’s that affective layer that a colleague’s insightful post nails in the metaphor above.
I get that.
L&D has gotten good at writing “instructional content”. (Not all. But a lot.)
But real performance lives in the middle of chaos…
…in noisy meetings,
…high-stakes decisions,
…frayed tempers.
That’s where emotion, not just logic, rears its head.
𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐲
My colleague also called out something near and dear to my L&D heart: ecological validity.
That is, how well a learning experience reflects the actual environment you have to operate in.
Think: Teaching someone to cook with a perfect recipe in a quiet kitchen is one thing. Having them cook during a Friday night dinner rush in a loud, understaffed kitchen is another.
Ecological validity says: “Train for the dinner rush.”*
(*Caveat: Yes, scaffolding has its role in learning design. We can build foundational skills in calm settings first, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 add the heat.)
𝐀𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭
My point? L&D professionals shouldn’t forget about Bloom’s affective sibling when designing learning experiences.
Not just the setting, but the feeling.
The tension, the pressure, the stakes.
The uncertainty.
The sense of risk and reward.
We remember what mattered.
We grow from what moved us.
And we perform when the environment 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 real, and the people around us are part of the context in finding our footing.
𝐌𝐲 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲?
For "sticky" learning: consider going beyond the cognitive domain.
Design for the environment the learners live/work in.
Design for the kitchen when it’s on fire.
