Teachers and teaching

Teachers are key facilitators of quality education, which is also recognised in the SDGs (Hattie, 2009; UNESCO, 2015c). In under-resourced schools, such as those in Tanzania, considering the lack of textbooks and other learning materials, teachers play an even more important role in providing quality education. Due to the expansion of both primary and secondary level of education, attracting and training a sufficient number of teachers has been defined as a priority in Tanzanian education policies as is shown in Chapter 3. In primary schools, teachers can teach with a Certificate in Education, whereas at the secondary level, teachers are required to have either a diploma (2 years) or BA degree in education (3 years).

3 Administrative units of Tanzania are from largest to smallest: regions, disctricts, divisions and wards.

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Tanzanian basic education statistics show that the number of qualified teachers in primary schools increased by about 81,492 from 2001 to 2013 (URT, 2014b). Similarly, improvement has been achieved on the secondary level, where the number of qualified teachers was 65,513 in 2013 compared to only 14,352 in 2001. In 2014, the qualified teacher-pupil ratio in primary schools was 1:44 and 1:28 in secondary schools. However, there are still large differences between regions, where the numbers are much worse in rural areas (Sumra & Katabaro, 2014). On the secondary level, shortages of teachers, especially in science and mathematics, have a negative impact on the quality of education. Now, because of the introduction of free secondary education in 2016 and the further expansion of the secondary level of education, attracting, training and retaining teachers will be vital in the coming years to ensure quality education in secondary schools.

However, the greatest challenge is that teachers in Tanzania often lack the necessary content knowledge and acceptable professional environments to perform quality teaching (Mrutu, 2007; Tao, 2013). Large class sizes, lack of teaching and learning materials, low salaries and challenging working conditions influence teachers’ professionalism and motivation in teaching activities, which further limit the quality of pupils’ learning (Bennell & Mukyanuzi, 2005; Sumra & Katabaro, 2014). Tao (2013) found that even if teachers have ambitions to teach well, they often experience severe personal constraints, for instance poor living conditions or lack of respect from their community, that limits their performance at school.

Furthermore, the social status of the teaching profession in Tanzanian society has also changed over the past two to three decades. In 1990, the teaching profession had a higher status and teachers chose this profession with the goal of helping to build the nation (Cooksey, Ishumi, Malekela, & Galabawa, 1991). Now, on the other hand, teachers often choose the teaching profession as a “plan B or C” when their “plan A” failed; many of them look at teaching as a way to earn a living while they are looking for alternatives (Sumra &

Katabaro, 2014). Thus, students with lower performance and low motivation join teacher training colleges (TTCs), which also impacts the quality of their work as teachers later.

Considering the current situation, investing in improving teachers’ professionalism and working conditions are recognised as a priority in Tanzanian education policy documents, as is shown later. Furthermore, in order to reach the policy objectives regarding improving quality, teacher training plays an important role in transmitting the values and objectives of these policies. The success of implementation will also depend on the extent to which teachers

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have managed not only to learn subject content and teaching methods but also to internalise the way of thinking about the purpose of education.

Relevance of the study

Quality in education is mostly defined at the policy level and teachers as the actual participants of the education system are hardly involved in discussing and designing quality education (Tikly & Barrett, 2013). Furthermore, there is a gap in literature in assessing how teachers’ perceptions of quality are formed by the teacher training they receive and whether they can identify themselves with the quality perceptions they have been taught. Providing quality education might be a great challenge if there are discrepancies between the perception of quality education on the policy level and teachers’ everyday educational practices, thus making it hard to improve quality set in national policies. Furthermore, recognising the importance of investing in teachers as per the SDGs (UNESCO, 2014b, 2015b), it is highly relevant to carry out research about how teachers perceive quality and how quality can be improved by empowering them to discuss quality in practice. Therefore, in the light of quality defined at the policy level, this study intends to investigate teachers’ own perspectives of quality and teaching practices in reality. Without aiming at producing generalizable findings, the study may provide a valuable contribution to the field of study by shedding light on the impact of teacher training and exploring teachers’ own perspectives of quality since they have the most influence on improving the quality of education in practice.

Furthermore, teachers’ professional environment and the process of teaching were examined in addition to teachers’ perception of quality education. This aimed to look at how perceptions of teachers’ valued quality education are translated into action and to what extent their professional environment, such as working conditions, and professional training opportunities enable them to provide quality teaching, how their teaching practices and pedagogical methods are formed by the training they received and their own perceptions of quality. In addition, this study investigated the challenges that teachers face with regard to providing the quality education they value and the possible solutions they see in practice. Finally, investigating the question of quality both in a government school and two private schools shed light on different aspects of teachers’ quality perception and practices given the different physical and working conditions. Teachers’ values and perceptions were analysed in light of the theoretical and policy frameworks outlined in the next chapter.

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3 Conceptual framework

In this chapter, I outline the underpinnings of the three theoretical approaches in examining the issue of quality in secondary education in Tanzania, namely the human capital, human rights and social justice approaches. Subsequently, I present the education policy context in Tanzania that provided a framework for the analysis and discussion of the findings in this study.