Educational Assessment In Tanzania

This book examines teachers’ conceptions and practices of assessment in Tanzania. Adopting a sociocultural perspective, it reveals how Tanzanian teachers understand the role of assessment in relation to their classroom practices, community and other factors. The book determines that although teachers in Tanzania generally consider assessment to be useful for evaluating and monitoring learning, improving student performance and for accountability, their assessment practices are rarely seen as directly supporting student learning; it is not that teachers do not know how to implement the mandated assessment reforms. Instead, they are reluctant to adopt and embrace the reforms because they consider them to be contradictory to their teaching roles, and overly burdensome, if not implausible, given the physical, economic and cultural contexts of teaching and learning. This book argues that improving traditional assessments, rather than radically transforming them, can be more effective for cultivating practices that suit the physical, political, economic and cultural contexts of Tanzanian schools. Highlighting the significance of sociocultural factors in educators’ professional practices, while also illustrating the major challenges in implementing global reform agendas in diverse contexts, it is a valuable resource for educators and scholars interested in development and educational reform in African contexts.

Assessment is a key area of interest and debate in education. Its increased use by governments as a powerful means of influencing educational practice are now features of the educational scene worldwide. This volume was the first major international review of such developments and it explores the impact of assessment on all areas of education, from teaching skills to policy-making. The contributors take a global perspective to spotlight the common problems facing teachers and students, policy-makers and politicians through the world as they seek to reconcile issues of equity and national development, educational imperatives and finite state resources. The contributions discuss the changing role of assessment and public examinations, and consider such specific issues as the development of a market economy in educational provision, the difficulties of measuring standards in international studies, and accreditation of absolute rather than relative competencies.

Education in Tanzania in the Era of Globalisation Challenges and Opportunities is a product of papers presented at a National Education Conference held in Dodoma, Tanzania in November 2016 and organised by the Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development, East Africa (AKU-IED-EA). At present, Tanzanias development direction is guided by Vision 2025, which aims to achieve a high quality livelihood for its people be attainment of Vision 2025 will depend largely on rapid socio-economic development based on several social and economic pillars including, most importantly, education. Clearly, for Tanzania, the scope and quality of education remains the single most important prerequisite to the attainment of Vision 2025 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The individual chapters in this publication, and their collective thrust, discuss the challenges in the education system in good faith and in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration guided by the belief that it is not the responsibility of the Government alone to see how these can be addressed. AKU IED EA has identd this as the responsibility of all well-meaning corporate bodies and citizens, and initiated thst conference of its type as its contribution to thore conference, as well as the publication, has to be seen as a model of good practice for universities in terms of sharing knowledge, experience, and practice with other stakeholders who are not in the academy, and more so, with politicians as well as government policy planners. The various authors of Education in Tanzania in the Era of Globalisation Challenges and Opportunities discuss issues within the context of the Tanzanian political economy against thects of globalization and seek to initiate a new kind of debate that is long overdue; a debate aimed at charting out appropriate strategies whose objective is to improve the quality of education in Tanzania so that it becomes a useful vehicle in enhancing processes of social change, transformation and development.

In recent years, international efforts to improve educational quality in sub-Saharan Africa have focused on promoting learner-centered pedagogy. However, it has not fl ourished for cultural, economic, and political reasons that often go unrecognized by development organizations and policymakers. This edited volume draws on a long-term collaboration between African and American educational researchers in addressing critical questions regarding how teachers in one African country—Tanzania—conceptualize learner-centered pedagogy and struggle to implement it under challenging material conditions. One chapter considers how international support for learner-centered pedagogy has infl uenced national policies. Subsequent chapters utilize qualitative data from classroom observations, interviews, and focus group discussions across six Tanzanian secondary schools to examine how such policies shape local practices of professional development, inclusion, gender, and classroom discourse. In addition, the volume presents an analysis of the benefi ts and challenges of international research between Tanzanian and U.S. scholars, illuminating the complexity of collaboration as it simultaneously presents the outcome of joint research on teachers’ beliefs and practices. The chapters conclude with questions for discussion that can be used in courses on international development, social policy, and teacher education. “This volume, written by a multi-national team of scholar-practitioners, makes an important contribution to our understanding of learner-centered teaching and collaborative educational research. Based on an intensive investigation in Tanzania of a professional development program and teachers’ efforts to conceptualize and implement a globally-promoted pedagogical approach, the authors illustrate – and critically analyze – how these practices are enabled and constrained by cultural lenses, power relations, and material conditions. Importantly, they also examine refl exively how cultural, power, and resource issues shaped their struggle to engage in a collective praxis of qualitative inquiry. The tensions referenced in the title sparked valuable insights, which will be useful to educators, researchers, and policy makers.” — Mark Ginsburg, FHI 360 and Teachers College, Columbia University.

Tanzania aims to reach middle income status by 2025. Since the country's economic growth will increasingly require workforce with postsecondary training and skills, the education system needs to close systemic gaps and inefficiencies at the root of its current undeperformance.

This title reviews four aspects of educational assessment: public examinations, national assessment, international assessment, and classroom assessment, and offers suggestions for using different forms of assessment to enhance student learning.

This book examines educators and parents’ practices of corporal punishment of preschool-aged children in school and at home in Tanzania, considering why it is that many children in Tanzania are still subject to corporal punishment. It explores the attitudes of parents, teachers, and educational leaders about corporal punishment, in the context of existing government policies, laws, and regulations, using interviews, questionnaires and observation. Corporal punishment is widely and frequently used by both parents and teachers as a way of maintaining discipline, with most regarding it favourably as a means of behavioural modification. Furthermore, the book shows that the use of corporal punishment in Tanzania is influenced by cultural norms and religious beliefs, teacher qualifications and parents’ levels of education, past experiences of corporal punishment, and related beliefs about the practice. Crucially, there has not yet been a societal-level legal framework established to protect children from the harms involved.