Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy was actually designed to "create a system of describing in detail different levels of cognitive functioning so that the precision of testing cognitive performance could be improved" (Shrock & Coscarelli, 1996, p. 35). The implications were that testing could increase the level of certainty that students had reached one of the six levels of understanding because they would not be able to reliably perform at higher levels of testing because each level subsumes those below it. "In other words, a student functioning at the 'application' level has also mastered the material at the 'knowledge' and 'comprehension' levels. One can easily see how this arrangement led to natural divisions of lower and higher level thinking." (Florida International University, 2010) "Therefore, when you develop a hierarchy of objectives, you can classify each objective according to Bloom's level and then determine if the sequence reflected in your hierarchy matches Bloom's sequence" (Shrock & Coscarelli, 1996, p. 37).

Bloom's Taxonomy has been and remains one of the most powerful tools in use today to measure the levels of performance learners achieve. The most important aspect of this tool is that it allows educators and trainers to make comparisons and test their results without wondering if those comparisons are skewed in one direction or another. The proverbial apples to apples and oranges to oranges comparisons could now be made with a high degree of confidence in the results. Even if the subjects or courses are different, Bloom's Taxonomy still applies based on the learning levels the students have achieved