Distance education and the training of primary school teachers in Tanzania

Abstract: Tanzania has been using distance education to train its teachers for twenty years. Thefirst programme, which began in 1976 and ended in 1984, was highly innovative inits approach. It provided both professional and up-grading studies within the primaryschools to try and meet the demand for universal primary education. The secondmajor programme used more conventional correspondence studies to up-date itsprimary school teachers and still continues today.The study explores why, and how, distance education has developed in Tanzaniaand why it has vigorously pursued this method as a major tool in training its primaryschool teachers. Historical, cultural socio-economic and political contexts werehelpful in understanding the motivations, origins and developments of the two majorprogrammes beginning in 1979. The empirical material in the study covers twomajor distance teacher education programmes for primary school teachers inTanzania. The first programme, the Distance School based Teacher Trainingprogramme from 1976-1984 was critically re-analysed using former evaluationstudies. The second programme, 1984 to date was evaluated using a frame-process-outcome' model and is also presented.A new framework for the provision of distance education was developed usingthe important interactive elements of the educational process - teacher, learner(s) andcontent. The framework focuses upon the intended learning and incorporatededucation and adult education theories. Ten framework categories were developedfor reappraisal and analyse of the Tanzanian distance teacher education programmes.Finally suggestions were made, using the framework model for a new approach todistance education and teacher training.The outcomes suggests the need for a more decentralised authority and a greaterdifferentiation of tasks in administration, the setting up of school cluster and learnergroups and the provision of more responsive support systems. Framework categoriessuggested a move towards interdependency in their working, within a distributivemodel of distance education.