Competency, KSA, and Bloom
My way of relating Bloom's Taxonomy to Competency
A foundational concept that is my ‘go-to’ for thinking about learning is Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes (also Learning Objectives, also Intellectual Behaviors, and various other titles). Most people just say Bloom’s Taxonomy, or just Bloom.
What I want to discuss here is how I see Bloom helping to design a training program so that people can achieve a Competency. And just like the ending of ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy of _______”, the definition of ‘competency’ seems to have many forms. One way I prefer to define competency is that it encompass the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) required to perform a job role or task proficiently.
The knowledge part of KSA seems pretty straightforward to define. It’s the what - facts, information, knowledge, things you can think about and discuss and explain.
But differentiating skill and ability, that is where it gets fuzzy. And for me, that’s where Bloom helps. I’ve seen some explanations that say that skill is what you do, while ability is how well you do it, and I like that. Another way to differentiate between them is to associate skill with how, and ability with why, where, when & well.
I like to think of abilities as behaviors or qualities that ensure success, for example flexibility, adaptability, resilience, improvisation, imagination, and so on.
And when I look at the Bloom Taxonomy triangle, I see a way to represent this visually, and relate it constructively to how Bloom is used in training design. I show my association of KSA to Bloom below1.
I associate the first two levels of Bloom, Remember and Understand, with the knowledge part of a competency. This is all the stuff to ‘know’.
I match the third level of Bloom, Apply, with the skill part of competency. This is using the knowledge to perform, to do, to solve, and so on.
These first three levels are pretty much as far as most training programs go in my opinion. If your learners can repeat back what they have learned (on multiple choice exams) and can perform some new behavior (solve a problem, install some equipment, operate some machinery, complete some procedure), then it seems you’ve done your job.
What I believe is most exciting about designing and implementing good training is when you push above these three base levels of Bloom into the higher levels of intellectual behavior, cognitive processing, and performance proficiency. These top three levels of Analyze, Evaluate, and Create, are what I associate with the abilities part of competency.
The words ‘skill’ and ‘ability’ both have to do with visible external performance of some kind, and seem pretty much the same. But to force a distinction between them is the challenge of defining and building competency. And by applying the top three levels of the Bloom Taxonomy to formulate learning objectives and training activities, you can create wonderful learning outcomes that are well beyond the norm.
As an illustration, maybe you are tasked with developing training for sales reps. You could develop lessons and learning activities that result in the proper performance of prescribed selling techniques. But how about having them analyze, compare & contract, and differentiate among a variety of techniques or actual recorded performances? Or have them evaluate, critique, judge & defend their judgements, and select & justify a customized approach? And what if you challenged them to create, design, develop & implement their own synthesis techniques? It’s my opinion that most training programs don’t aspire to these levels of learning and achievement, but that by doing so, you would truly achieve competency.
What do you think?
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Pyramid image credit: CC Creative Commons Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching