Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Testing the Level of Student Knowledge.

2004; Project Innovation Austin; Volume: 124; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

0013-1172

Edgar J. Manton, Charles Tennyson Turner, Donald E. English,

Higher Education Learning Practices

Benjamin Bloom proposed six hierarchical and cumulative levels of testing to measure different levels of student subject knowledge. A review of these levels would assist the business law teacher in developing tests to measure the desired level of student mastery of the subject. It might also prove to be a tool for the teacher to assist in instructional evaluation. The lowest of these levels is knowledge, the ability to remember material previously learned. This level is a prerequisite for all other levels as is each level to all higher levels. Comprehension is the next level, where one must go beyond knowledge by understanding what one knows. Application is the next highest level. At this level one must be able to apply what he/she has comprehended. Then comes analysis, in which the individual must be able to break down or separate into parts the knowledge comprehended and applied. At the higher level is synthesis, which requires the creative combination of knowledge analyze from several topics to create something which previously did not exist. Finally, evaluation, the highest level, requires critical appraisal of the knowledge one has analyzed and synthesized. ********** All business law instructors attempt to teach materials at different learning levels. While some material is quite elementary, other material is more complex or advanced. Students should be tested on all levels of material presented to determine what they have mastered. Studies show, however, that most college testing involves recalling memorized facts (Crooks, 1998). Not enough testing is done to evaluate the student's ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate material. In other words, the student's critical thinking ability is not being evaluated. BLOOM'S TAXONOMY One approach for improving questioning and evaluating procedures in the classroom would be to follow Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. This is a framework for analyzing and testing for levels of knowledge achievement. Teachers who want to improve their questions, whether for essay tests or class discussions, will discover that constructing them on Bloom's model will make their task much simpler. In so doing, they will also guarantee a mix of questions on all cognitive levels and constrain students to perform the necessary critical thinking to answer them (Kloss, 1988, p. 245). It is felt that a review of Bloom's taxonomy classification would be beneficial to business law instructors and would help them design more effective tests and questions to evaluate student progress. A taxonomy is a hierarchical ranking of classifications to describe the level of student subject matter knowledge. A taxonomy designates the complexity and differences among these classifications. Many different taxonomy models have been developed in education, but the Bloom handbook on taxonomy of educational objectives has probably had the most impact of any model in the last three decades. As originally designed by Bloom, the taxonomy was an attempt to establish a sequential and cumulative hierarchy depicting the stages of learning from the most elementary to the most complex (Bloom, 1956). The purpose of this paper is to show how they relate to educational testing in general and specifically to testing in business law. EVALUATIVE TECHNIQUES FOR COGNITIVE OBJECTIVES IN TESTING Bloom identified six levels of evaluation for cognitive objectives which relate to levels of testing. In order from lowest level of teaching or testing to the highest level these are: 1. Knowledge objectives 2. Comprehensive objectives 3. Application objectives 4. Analysis objectives 5. Synthesis objectives 6. Evaluation objectives Bloom posited six cognitive operations in a hierarchy in which the operation above subsumes all those preceding it. …