The Self-Assessment Competency Gap in Higher-Order Thinking Assessment Among Secondary School Science and Mathematics Teachers in Tanzania

Source abstract

Tanzania’s Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) requires assessment tasks that authentically engage students in higher-order cognitive processes, including analysing, evaluating, and creating. This study examines a persistent contradiction in secondary science and mathematics classrooms: teachers’ self-reports indicate familiarity with Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, yet they demonstrate limited accuracy in classifying and designing higher-order thinking (HOT) assessment tasks. Using survey data from 225 secondary school teachers in the Lindi, Mtwara, and Njombe regions of Tanzania, the study investigates the discrepancy between teachers' perceived competence in assessing higher-order thinking and their actual performance in constructing and recognising such tasks. The study uses Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy as an evaluative framework alongside metacognitive theories of self-assessment. The findings indicate that fewer than 40% of teachers can accurately sequence all six cognitive levels of the taxonomy. Assessment items that teacher’s self-rate as targeting ‘Analysing’ or ‘Evaluating’ are frequently reclassified by independent raters to lower cognitive levels, primarily ‘Understanding’ or ‘Applying’, suggesting systematic overestimation of competence. The discrepancy is associated with teaching experience but shows no clear variation across subject disciplines. The paper argues that deficiencies in higher-order assessment design represent a critical yet addressable barrier to effective CBC implementation. It concludes that overcoming this barrier requires more than awareness-raising; it calls for sustained, subject-specific, practice-based professional development and has implications for pre-service teacher education, in-service professional learning, and aligning assessment policy with curriculum goals.