Teachers’ Utilization of Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy in Examination in Public Secondary Schools in Nandi County, Kenya

Stakeholders are generally concerned in how public secondary schools perform academically in contrast to private schools. The optimal application of Bloom’s Taxonomy should foster increased performance. Thus, the purpose of the study was to ascertain how students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools in Nandi County, Kenya, related to teachers’ application of Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy in teaching and examination. The study’s goal was to find out how instructors used Bloom’s Taxonomy when creating internal exams. A pragmatic paradigm was used in the investigation. The foundation of this study was Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy. This study used an explanatory sequential design in conjunction with a mixed method research technique. The research population consisted of 2055 teachers from 137 public secondary schools. The sample size was 360 teachers from 30 county schools. 30 county schools were selected using simple random sampling, from which 12 Form 3 teachers teaching 6 selected subjects were identified. Questionnaires and document analysis were used to collect data from examination. Data was analyzed using frequencies, and means. The results showed that 86 % of the teachers utilized Bloom’s Taxonomy when setting exams. The overall percentages for using Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy in examination papers were as follows: remembering 29.4%, understanding 28.5%, applying 14.5%, analyzing 9.9%, evaluating 8.7%, and creating 8.8%. The study therefore concluded that, most teachers used Bloom’s Taxonomy when developing internal tests, and recommended that all teachers should utilize Bloom’s Taxonomy and maximize all the levels of it in exams so as to promote an insightful approach to learning and critical thinking experience that will enhance academic performance for the students.