Before we can address how people learn, it is important to establish exactly what people learn. In essence, as people engage in the learning process, what are typical objectives or outcomes of learning? Benjamin Bloom, along with colleagues, developed a taxonomy of learning objectives that is used in education but also applies to training and development.

Bloom’s Taxonomy has three main learning domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The cognitive domain involves knowledge and comprehension of facts and concepts. At the lowest level, this involves information that is memorized. As the cognitive domain increases, learners must understand, apply, and extrapolate to other situations.

The affective domain involves how individuals relate emotionally to knowledge—specifically, how they gain feelings, values, and attitudes about the given topic. When learners are able to affectively and emotionally engage with the material they are learning, the likelihood that they will learn and utilize the information increases. The psychomotor domain depicts the ability to physically utilize an object, such as a tool. Similar to the cognitive domain, the psychomotor domain moves the learner from basic sensory cues for how to use a new tool, to adapting and extrapolating use of a tool in a new context.

While the original focus of Bloom’s Taxonomy was directed toward primary and secondary education, understanding the taxonomy has applications for workplace training as well. It isn’t enough to just memorize new information to perform a job. Employees are expected to both understand and apply to workplace situations the KSAs they learn. Effective training and development programs ensure trainees are provided with the knowledge they need to do the job, but also the skills needed to apply that knowledge to achieve high levels of performance.