Teacher Preparation and Continuing
Professional Development in Africa (TPA)
THE PREPARATION OF TEACHERS IN READING AND MATHS
AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PRACTICES IN TANZANIAN PRIMARY
SCHOOLS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Tanzania’s Country Report
July 28th 2011
Lead Researcher:
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Professor Eustella Bhalalusesa [email protected]
Researchers:
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Dr Rebecca Sima
Dr Martha Qorro
Dr Joviter Katabaro
Ms Magreth Matonya
Mr Jonas Tiboroha
Mr Ibrahim Nzima
1. Research context and introduction
The goal of Education for All by 2015 has galvanized many
countries in sub-Sahara Africa, including Tanzania, into
confronting their low rates of enrolment. However, filling the
classrooms is not enough; education for all, in order to have
positive social and economic consequences, must involve
children learning at least the basic minimum competences
of literacy and numeracy that will enable them to benefit
from and contribute to their society’s future.
The Teacher Preparation and Continuing Professional
Development Project, funded by the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, was set up to fill the gap in knowledge
about how the initial and continuing education of teachers
impacts on the practice of teachers through studies in six
African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania
and Uganda. This summary presents the main findings of
the Tanzanian research. Because of the extreme
importance of early reading and mathematics for future
progress, it focuses on the preparation that teachers who
teach in the lower primary grades receive and what support
is available through continuing professional development
(CPD) and other routes to teach these subjects.
In this project, we conceptualize competence in terms of
knowledge, understanding and practice. Practice is central
to good teaching but successful teachers would concur with
the great body of research into teaching that good practice
cannot just depend on the uncritical application of
techniques. It is a complex process which requires a great
deal of different knowledge:
 Content knowledge, that is knowing about the subject
matter to be taught;
 Pedagogic knowledge, that is knowing how to engage
with learners and to manage a classroom;
 Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), that involves
knowing how to represent and formulate the subject
matter, in this case of early reading and mathematics
that make it comprehensible to students.
The research hinges on establishing the different
knowledge, understanding and practices that are expected
of teachers during their preparation and then comparing
them with those that they actually exhibit at different points
in their training and career.
First, we established the competences relevant to the
teaching of reading and mathematics that the program of
initial teacher education seeks to develop in trainee
teachers. Then, we built up a picture of the knowledge,
understanding and practice of actual trainee teachers at the
end of their training, of newly qualified teachers (NQTs), and
of teachers having taken part in CPDs and/or with more
experience. Both quantitative and qualitative data were
used to develop this.
The quantitative data derived from a questionnaire
administered to 848 trainees from 4 different colleges; 164
NQTs and 88 experienced teachers from 33 different
schools. The qualitative data came from focus group
discussions with teacher trainees from three Teacher
Training Colleges (TTCS); in-depth interviews following
lesson observations with 39 NQTS (18 for reading and 21
for maths); in-depth interviews following lesson observations
with 15 CPD teachers and 8 in-depth interviews following
lesson observations in 4 TTCs.
The qualitative data from interviews and focus groups were
transcribed and imported into Nvivo 8 qualitative data
analysis software with other appropriate texts such as
summaries of observations. Data were coded and sorted
into using a system of hierarchical categories. This enabled
patterns to be identified and queries to be run. Quantitative
data from the trainees and teachers questionnaires were
analyzed using Stata software. Interpretation of the data
was largely based on descriptive statistical analysis with
some use of inferential statistics such as the calculation of
Pearson’s Chi2 to test for independence and Cramer’s V to
look at effect size.
2. Initial Teacher Education
The TTC is seen as the key source of influence for the
trainees, NQTs, more experienced teachers – and even
some of the tutors. It is central in the construction of
trainees’ subject knowledge, their PCK, and their
understanding and application. Trainees usually arrive in
TTCs as relatively young students with only four years of
secondary school training and are taught in English – which
they only partly understand. Viewed as a continuation of
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secondary school in the upgrading of their subject
knowledge, their conceptions of teaching are created in
TTCs.
While the ITE curriculum for mathematics is detailed and
relatively well aligned with the primary curriculum, the
reading curriculum is not sufficiently detailed to support
tutors to teach it well nor for trainees and NQTs – who
follow it uncritically – to use as an appropriate guide to
teach reading and mathematics. The ITE curriculum is
overly generalized particularly in the pedagogy section and
needs to be differentiated for lower and upper primary.
Also, the ITE curriculum has many aims and is overloaded
with many subjects for trainees to cover and be examined
on. These examinations assess both content and methods
but actual teaching practice is underused as an assessment
mode.
Tutors do not have access to specific tutor guides to teach
the ITE curriculum and the plethora of different textbooks
means an inconsistent approach even within one TTC.
Tutors are not involved in curriculum design either for the
TTC or primary and they are not always informed when
curricula are updated. With frequent changes in the primary
curriculum, trainees are taught content that does not
necessarily match what is actually taught in the primary
schools. Tutors often do not have primary school
experience themselves and so cannot critique the TTC
curriculum nor the primary curriculum from an experiential
point of view. With their trainees only getting practice in
teaching upper primary, these tutors may have very little or
no direct contact with lower primary school classes and
pedagogies. CPD opportunities are of a great help but these
are rare and are not specific to reading or maths.
Tutors have to teach much theory to cover all the expected
outcomes from the ITE curriculum. While they attempt to
talk about learner-centered methods, they are constrained
by large classes, few resources and what appears to be a
separation of content and methods within the college. They
tend to replicate their own education and use demonstration
or simulation but these can be at a superficial level.
Because of their lack of primary experience, the reality of
Tanzanian classrooms remains abstract. Pedagogies
appropriate for large, congested classrooms filled with
multilingual, mixed ability and sometimes mixed age
children with very few resources are not well known to them.
Theory and practice remain very separate.
Block practice (BTP) is seen as highly beneficial to trainees,
integrating theory and practice. However, they are not
allocated lower primary classrooms, nor do they get the
opportunity to teach lower primary as NQTs. BTP can be a
difficult time, too short for meaningful learning, with little
school support, few resources and hard living conditions.
The potential benefits that could be used by integrating
theory and practice through the demonstrations schools that
are on most TTC campuses are not exploited.
However, the TTC is the major source of influence in terms
of developing teachers. It can produce innovative, critical
and reflective NQTs who understand that they need to
synthesize their knowledge gained from the TTC with that of
more experienced colleagues, private study and CPD.
Making changes here will reap great benefits in a short time.
3. Newly Qualified Teachers
Usually, NQTs are only allowed to teach in upper primary.
They are trained for this through working with more
experienced teachers but this is on an ad hoc basis and
dependent on the good will and expertise of these teachers.
Some NQTs follow the primary syllabus without thinking but
it changes rapidly so there can be a gap between what they
were taught at the TTC and the content and methods they
are expected to teach. They are unprepared to teach large
classes in resource-poor environments – and this is their
major complaint. Some children have been to pre-school
while others have not but NQTs are ill-prepared to teach
pre-reading and pre-numeric skills. NQTs are, however,
aware of the paradigm shift towards more learner-centered
approaches and some are able to develop their practice and
move towards this in a manner appropriate to their context.
Some specific gaps in NQTs’ knowledge appear to stem
from their weak grades at ‘O’ level, particularly in maths.
Other gaps, however, may reflect the lack of focus in the
TTC on the theory and pedagogic skills necessary to teach
the youngest children. In reading, they lack knowledge and
pedagogical content knowledge of phonological awareness,
phonology, teaching of phonics, and comprehension of
longer continuous texts. In maths, they find teaching
subtraction, solving word problems and division hardest to
teach and appear ill-equipped to teach early numeracy. The
TTC curriculum may not give enough depth of
understanding of mathematical concepts to sustain
developing teachers over the first few years of their career.
The TTC curriculum outcomes expect that trainees will be
innovative and secure in their theoretical and practical
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knowledge but only around a third of the NQTs observed fell
into this category. Observed variations in practice indicate
that the initial training is not strong enough to ensure
regularity or that all NQTs will be innovative. The
development of practice is therefore dependent on NQTs’
self-motivation and efficacy, on opportunities for good
mentoring and collaboration, and on CPD programs. NQT’s
pre-service teacher education gave them basic knowledge
but most of their professional knowledge came from
experience in teaching in schools and from experienced
teachers.
4. Experienced teachers
their own big books to ensure pupils easy access to
stimulating text. Bringing experienced teachers more
directly into the TTCs and clarifying their roles in training
NQTs early on will support the acquisition of these
professional skills in trainees and NQTs.
In the research there was ample evidence to show that both
NQTs and experienced teachers had grasped participatory
methods and were able to adapt these and extend them for
less able and disabled students. They used methods
appropriate in their circumstances. However, what was
present in our sample of experienced teachers but
somehow missing from NQTs is better knowledge and
deeper understanding of the content in both maths and
reading and their specific strategies. Once this gap is filled
in, we are suggesting that teachers may be able to integrate
the subject and pedagogic knowledge and turn this into
pedagogic content knowledge.
5. Learning to teach reading
In their practice, the experienced teachers observed can be
characterized and distinguished from NQTs in five specific
ways:
1. They teach at a faster cognitive pace, getting pupils to
learn more materials in a more systematic way with a
sense of progression within each lesson
2. They create teaching and learning aids and integrate
them into their lessons
3. They are more inclusive of children with special needs,
analysing what their specific needs are and using their
imagination and knowledge in using teaching aids and
verbal explanations to include them.
4. They team teach more often than NQTs, perhaps a
policy appropriate for younger children but use this to
discuss issues together and to learn from one another in
an active on-going construction of knowledge.
5. They are good managers, using time effectively and
ensuring learners get more time to practice the new
skills. They ensure all learners understand, identify
those who do not, and mark all books within the lesson.
Some of these skills develop over time but crucially within
the specific learning context of the large, multilingual and
resource-poor Tanzanian primary classroom.
Some,
however, could be expectations of trainees and NQTs such
as inculcating a sense of progression, integral use of
teaching aids and specific strategies to include students
with special education needs. Teachers who had been
involved in the Children’s Book Project, for example, made
Overall, teachers of reading in Tanzania use songs, rhymes,
riddles and pictures to motivate young children to read and
recognize through this the importance of oral language and
its relationship to reading. They use phonics in the form of
initial letter sounds, but this approach is linked to the main
syllabic approach, combined with whole word or look and
say and the use of pictures. Reading aloud is important for
pronunciation and this may also involve teaching children to
distinguish between tones and short and long vowels
essential to Kiswahili. The four language skills are seen as
integrated. Vocabulary is first taught separately from the
context in which the new words are found. Synthetic
building up of words into sentences is a usual approach.
Comprehension is often in the form of children reading a
story from the board aloud and answering questions on it.
Trainees and NQTs appear to communicate a higher sense
of personal efficacy than experienced teachers. However,
this is accompanied by a more superficial understanding
and a more limited repertoire of teaching strategies for
reading. More experienced teachers do not necessarily
communicate a low level of efficacy, but a more realistic
one. Trainees in particular tend to underestimate the
challenges of teaching lower primary reading.
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The place of pre-reading skills is uncertain and not easily
identified from the ITE curriculum or primary curriculum.
Teaching a multilingual classroom is not central to either
curriculum. Phonological awareness is missing from ITE
leaving this skill unknown to some teachers. The use of
songs and rhymes are, however, common and could be
used to teach phonological awareness and distinguish
differences between languages. Systematic phonics
including recognizing letters within words and at the end of
words and blending letters together may not be as wellknown as the syllabic approach. Using syntactic cues to
make sense of a new word seems difficult to teach.
Reading aloud for fluency, reading rate and comprehension
is not a focus, although pronunciation is. Teaching longer
continuous texts is not well taught and more teaching
around print concepts is needed, as well as a focus on
reading for meaning and inference. Encouraging a reading
culture and the integration of word level work with text level
seems to be mainly practiced by experienced teachers who
have been on CPD. It is not clear whether this is due to
attending CPD’s only but it seems that this could be given
more attention at TTC level. Exposure to printed materials
seems difficult, with materials in Kiswahili perhaps hard to
get hold of. There is little or no independent reading by
children. Comprehension-monitoring skills are difficult to
teach under these circumstances.
What NQTs learnt from the TTC and what they gain during
the teaching of older children will influence the way they
teach in lower primary. This may mean that many teach the
truncated form of reading – word level within a sometimes
hypothetical text – but without also introducing pre-reading
skills and print concept. Pupils under their tutelage may
therefore not learn the basics of reading – alphabet
knowledge and phonological awareness – and struggle to
make sense of the letters, syllables and words presented in
their class, particularly if the teacher’s knowledge of phonics
is not strong. Without a print-rich literacy environment in the
classroom and without the songs, stories, rhymes and play
that children need, they may never grasp the ability to
decode or understand the purpose of reading.
6. Learning to teach mathematics
A frequent approach in TTCs is for mathematics tutors to
teach the theory then demonstrate the practice in front of
the group or sometimes ask the trainees to demonstrate
themselves. Tutors said that they draw a lot from their own
teaching experience when giving their lessons and teach
trainees the importance of using songs and games to
engage pupils. There also seems to be an emphasis on
teaching aids and manipulation of small objects to learn
maths. However, since the delivery method is teacher-led,
trainees are likely to associate this type of practice to what
they should do in schools. There seems to be little attention
on how to manage group work or supervise a classroom
when pupils are using material. In the lessons observed,
there was a lack of realistic scenarios that could help
trainees to understand how small children can behave with
the material and what the teacher should do in terms of
group work supervision and formative evaluation.
Adaptability and classroom management were recognized
as important but the extent to which TTC contribute to
develop such capacities is unclear.
Some teacher education practices assume that primary
school mathematics is not difficult, and that trainees who
acquire sufficient mathematics content knowledge and
knowledge of methods for teaching mathematics in schools
will become good math teachers. This can lead to the belief
that teachers only need to know a collection of facts and
rules and that children can do maths just by following set
procedures to arrive at an answer. This is problematic
because even when a teacher is able to do mathematics,
he/she may not have the kind of mathematical
understandings that can help pupils to learn it meaningfully.
This somehow reflects what the research team observed.
The NQTs who took part in the research generally showed
good knowledge of the primary maths curriculum although
they mentioned being confused by the mismatch between
the syllabus and some of the text books. Their disciplinary
knowledge appears to come from their secondary school
experience while they claim that they gained their
understanding of teaching maths predominantly from TTC
then from working in schools. NQT’s knowledge and
understanding varied considerably between teachers with
some NQTs showing big gaps in their understanding of
mathematical concepts and PCK. They tend to teach
sequentially and although they say that they prefer more
concrete and learner-centred activities, they use a lot of
drilling. Some NQTs did make the attempt to engage or
involve pupils actively in learning, but in a superficial
manner. The activity method is about focusing on the pupils’
personal construction of mathematical knowledge. It is a
teaching model which fits a problem-solving or constructivist
view of learning mathematics and is meant to emphasize
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conceptual understanding. NQTs’ practices were often
instrumental and lacked the kind of learner-centred focus
which has the potential to allow children to construct their
own understanding of the concepts.
The main differences between NQTs and the experienced
teachers who took part in maths related CPD programmes
such as KKK, EQUIP, MAKUTA or local on-the-job training
appears to be their PCK. Their adaptability to learners’
needs was stronger and they were better at time
management, group control, supervision of exercises and
formative assessment. They also had a deeper
understanding of mathematic concepts which enabled them
to provide simple explanations. CPD teachers are also more
reflexive in their approach to teaching and learning.
7. Recommendations to take forward
from the primary curriculum that embeds decoding within
comprehension
8. Develop case studies on formative evaluation based on
real classroom situations and common pupils’ mistakes
for both maths and reading and distribute them in the
TTCs for tutors to use in their teaching.
TTC curriculum
1. Include a full model of reading that includes integration
of word level and comprehension with a focus on oral
reading fluency and a rationale for this so that teachers
are adequately prepared to teach the primary
curriculum.
2. Include some notions about bilingual classroom
management and how to deal with local languages when
teaching early reading and maths.
3. Take into account the importance of pre-reading and
pre-numeric skills and increase the focus on early
grades.
Primary curriculum
Initial teacher education
Enhancing CPD programs may not be enough as they can
rarely reach the critical mass needed for profound and
lasting change and which would be expensive. The simpler
but more effective alternative would be to alter the structure
of the initial training, and specifically to:
1. Lengthen the teaching practice in schools to ensure at
least three months’ practice in real classrooms
2. Ensure that trainees observe and then teach lower
grades in at least one of the block practices
3. Ensure tutors are involved in block practice by placing
this before the end of the academic year so trainees
have to return to the TTC to reflect and discuss their
experience with their tutors
4. Ensure that tutors go out to supervise at least twice so
that they gain recent and relevant experience of primary
classrooms
5. Make more use of demonstration schools and other
nearby schools for single and double lesson teaching
and observation throughout the academic year
6. Draw on experienced teachers in local schools to be
used as expert teachers for students and tutors to
observe
7. Ensure tutors have CPD to update their knowledge of
reading, theory and practice with a model of reading
1. Reading to be taught from the beginning simultaneously
with oral skills and reading
2. The place and content of pre-reading skills and
phonological awareness should be clear and taught or
recapped in Standard 1
3. The primary curriculum is overloaded and should be
reduced to four or five subjects for lower primary
4. The model of reading in the primary curriculum needs to
include strategies for large classes; pre-reading skills;
more focus on comprehension with coherent teaching of
vocabulary through texts; strategies for managing
bilingual classrooms and code switching. It also needs to
be taught to trainees by tutors who understand the
model and know the underlying theory to explain.
5. A mechanism should be put in place to insure that TTCs
are systematically and rapidly informed of any change in
the primary curriculum.
6. Review the different text books used in primary schools
to make sure that they are still aligned with the
curriculum. New text books should follow strict
guidelines in terms of content, methods and organization
to reduce the risk of confusion for trainees and teachers.
Schools
1. Systematize and strengthen the induction process –
focusing on the continuing development of teachers’
curricular and pedagogical content knowledge – through
structured opportunities for coaching and collaborative
work with experienced teachers.
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