Pub. date: 2006 | Online Pub. Date: September 15, 2007 | DOI:
10.4135/9781412939584 | Print ISBN: 9780761930877 | Online ISBN:
9781412939584| Publisher:SAGE Publications, Inc.About this
encyclopedia An achievement test is an assessment tool that
measures what students have learned over a period of time.
Student learning may take place in a number of domains. In the
1950s, Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues proposed a six-level
taxonomy of cognitive learning: knowledge, comprehension,
application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The lowest
level of the taxonomy, knowledge, generally requires a student
to memorize facts and concepts. The next level, comprehension,
is a result of more internal processing of the information a
student has learned. The more advanced levels, application,
analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, involve more complex skills
and mental processes. Student learning may also occur in the
affective domain. For example, it is widely believed that
student motivation toward a subject may chan