I have just finished reading Evaluation to Improve Learning by Benjamin Bloom, George Madaus, Thomas Hastings. It was written in 1981 and contains some fascinating connections to modern-day proficiency learning in the United States and especially in Vermont.
I have written before about the connections between modern proficiency learning (as we call it in Vermont) or competency learning (as they call it elsewhere) and earlier incarnations, including William Spady’s outcome-based education and Bloom’s mastery learning, the original version of the whole approach. As I’ve proposed in the past, both mastery learning and outcome-based education each swept across the ed landscape like wildfires, only to burn out in nearly as short a time. In both cases the causes were a mixture of philosophical and political, and what’s particularly interesting is the way that it does seem to me as though modern proficiency learning is somewhat here to stay, at least in my home state. I often have cause to wonder why this is, and reading this book by Bloom and company reminds me of a very simple fact: there’s something really, really appealing about this approach.
Continue reading “Benjamin Bloom: The Father of Proficiency-Based Learning”