A curriculum studies programme for teacher education in Tanzania : an internationalisation of curriculum studies approach

Abstract

The Tanzania Education and Training Policy (1995) suggests plans for improving and transforming the country’s educational system to meet the societal needs of the twenty-first century. To implement these plans, the National Higher Education Policy (1999b) explains the need for internationalisation of higher education curriculum. One of the strategies put in place is to ensure that higher education curriculum programmes are developed in line with contemporary national and international circumstances (Tanzania, 1999b). In this thesis, an overview is given of how teacher education aligns Curriculum Studies as a discipline with the contemporary needs in society. The statement of the problem and the lacunae in the scholarship highlighted two main issues: (i) the absence of a Curriculum Studies programme which is informed by the internationalisation of Curriculum Studies discourse, and (ii) the under-researched nature of the discipline in the country. In this regard, this research explored the extent to which the internationalisation of Curriculum Studies discourse as an approach could be used in the development of a Curriculum Studies programme for teacher education in Tanzania. The objectives were the following:  To explore scholarly literature about developing a Curriculum Studies programme for teacher education in higher education  To analyse curriculum documents of a South African university for the development of a Curriculum Studies programme for teacher education in higher education in Tanzania  To explore the extent to which pragmatic intervention research could assist in eliciting heads of departments’, lecturers’ and students’ perspectives pertaining to developing a Curriculum Studies programme for teacher education. In the overview of the body of scholarship the historical developments in the Curriculum Studies discipline, and its curriculum development theories and practices were considered so as to conceptualise the first objective of the study. A qualitative research design was used to conduct the study. The methodological framework was that of a pragmatic intervention design and development. Purposive sampling was employed to select heads of departments, lecturers and students in Curriculum Studies. The study sites were four universities in Tanzania and one university in South Africa. Historical research, document research, and open-ended one-to-one and focus group interviews constituted the data generation methods. The analytical framework employed a dialectical-relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings presented in the data analysis chapters addressed the second and the third objectives of the study. The study’s findings confirmed the importance of acknowledging Curriculum Studies as a discipline in its own right which has progressed rapidly in the postmodernism era. The discipline is characterised by various discourses such as internationalisation and trends which influence teacher education. The growth of the discipline calls for teacher education in Tanzania to provide more space in curriculum design in order to address contemporary Curriculum Studies discourses and trends. As a result, teacher education will empower and transform teachers in their professional work and make it possible for Tanzania to have local experts in Curriculum Studies who can conduct research and publish nationally and internationally. Furthermore, the findings elicited to what extent the internationalisation of Curriculum Studies discourse could be used as an approach to inform the development of a Curriculum Studies programme. This approach highlights the importance of developing a curriculum based on the nature, the elements and the practice of the discipline. In addition, it necessitates the importance of engaging with the historical events of the discipline (verticality) and the present circumstances of the discipline (horizontality) as well as of including the deliberative theory through the praxis approach to curriculum development. It is vital to understand the notion of internationalisation from this perspective which forms the basis for the whole process of curriculum development. The findings also stressed the need to align the developed curriculum programme with the country’s relevant higher education accreditation policies