Delving into Dimensions

When I started developing Bloom’s 3D framework, one thing I was trying to move beyond was the hierarchical structure that typifies Bloom’s taxonomy. It never quite felt right to me – and this might be my slightly pedantic way of seeing things – but the idea of "knowledge" as the foundation of everything is problematic. Knowledge is one of those container words. It doesn’t actually point to anything solid or specific. In its broadest sense, knowledge encompasses skills, concepts, practice, and the ability to create and produce. So how can it be the foundation if it already includes everything?

Beyond that specific issue, hierarchies as a default organisational structure bother me. They’re often the simplest approach, but simple isn’t always appropriate – and in complex problem spaces, simplicity can actually make things worse. Learning is one of those complex problem spaces. It depends on so many different factors, operates as a system in its own right, and resists being flattened into a single linear progression.

Equalising the Domains

One of the more practical problems with the original Bloom’s framework is that the three domains – cognitive, affective, and psychomotor – didn’t have the same number of levels. Cognitive has six, affective has seven, psychomotor has five. That unevenness makes it impossible to look across the three domains and identify meaningful parallels.

One of the core tasks in developing Bloom’s 3D was equalising those levels so the framework could be read both vertically within a domain and horizontally across all three. My goal was to remove the hierarchy and create something more descriptive – a way of differentiating the kinds of learning taking place, without implying that one kind is simply better or more advanced than another.

The Six Dimensions

What emerged from that work was a set of six dimensions that describe different qualities of learning rather than a fixed sequence of steps.

• Perceptual – the ability to perceive what’s going on. This might involve listening, watching, reading, or identifying patterns. It’s primarily internal: the individual recognising something, whether that’s an emotional response, a physical sensation, or a cognitive structure. Perception operates across all three domains – you can perceive an idea, an emotion, or a movement.
• Conceptual – starting to understand the meaning behind what’s been perceived. How do things relate? What does this mean in relation to what I already know? This dimension involves isolating ideas to examine them, seeing emotional responses as something to understand rather than just experience, and recognising patterns in physical practice.
• Contextual – seeing concepts in their real-world setting. This is where theory and practice start to meet – through case studies, examples, and applied work. In a professional context, this is where the complexity of a real environment starts to become visible: not just one concept, but multiple concepts interacting within a specific situation.
• Practical – being able to apply what’s been understood in context. In the cognitive domain this looks like analysis; in the affective domain, organising and navigating competing values and responses; in the physical domain, practising and imitating, building toward routine and fluency.
• Critical – not just applying but evaluating. What’s working? What isn’t? What might be better? In the cognitive domain, this involves synthesis and proposal; in the affective domain, characterising patterns of behaviour and understanding why they occur; in the physical domain, performing at a level where adjustment and refinement become possible.
• Original – creating something new. Connecting concepts in novel ways, developing new models of working, producing original physical performances. This is the generative dimension, where prior learning across the other dimensions enables something that didn’t exist before.

Not a Ladder

One of the things I want to be clear about is that these dimensions are not a ladder to be climbed in sequence. The framework allows for movement in multiple directions depending on what the learning experience calls for.

A useful example is design thinking, which often starts in the original dimension – making something first, then being critical about it, then working back through context and concept to understand whether the idea actually holds. That’s a completely valid learning sequence, and one that works well for many design problems. The dimensions provide a vocabulary for describing what’s happening in that process, not a prescription for how it should unfold.

There’s also an important point about depth within each dimension. Perceiving a single musical note and perceiving the emotional undertow of an orchestral movement are both acts of perception – but they’re operating at very different levels of complexity. The dimension is the same; the depth varies with the discipline and the context.

The same is true at the original end. A child given paint and a blank page is being original – they’re creating something without having first mastered brush technique or colour theory. We don’t expect them to have worked through every prior dimension before we let them make something. The framework should accommodate that, not constrain it.

How It Connects to the Broader System

The dimensions sit within a larger system that connects three layers of thinking about learning:

• The dimensions and domains provide the structural framework – a way of thinking about what kinds of learning are involved and how they relate to each other across cognitive, affective, and physical registers.
• The learning types then translate that framework into a learner-centred perspective – what will the learner actually do and experience? Assimilative learning looks different from investigative learning or productive learning, and the types give you a language for making those distinctions explicit in your design.
• The learning patterns then provide building blocks for implementing those types. If you know you want assimilative learning, the patterns give you concrete structures for achieving it across different modes and modalities – they’re not tied to a specific medium, so they work whether you’re designing for online, face-to-face, or blended delivery.

What I’ve been doing over the last few weeks is connecting these layers in practice – using my own framework as the design tool for the work I’m doing. It’s one thing to develop a framework - it’s another to reach the point where you’re applying it fluently to new problems. The results so far are encouraging – I am seeing the connections throughout my work, but also understanding it better. Moving from a hierarchy takes some getting used to – there is something innate about following a linear progression that feels normal. And in a lot of cases it is normal, but I like the idea of space and being able to explore things outside of what is linear, to move within a space and for it to still make sense.