The Need for Changing Control of Teacher Colleges in the Quest for Teacher professionalism in Tanzania

Abstract

In Tanzania today there is ongoing debate concerning the need to change control of teacher colleges in order to educate teachers who are competent professionals. In the current setup teacher colleges are highly controlled by the government; whereby most of the decisions are centrally made. However, despite strong government influence on curriculum, assessment and management, yet teacher colleges are criticized for training ill trained teachers. This paper discusses the impact of imposed curriculum change, assessment system, authoritarian teacher college culture as well as principals’ roles on preparing student teachers to become creative and supportive of the learning of each individual student. To enable teachers to take a proactive part in their profession, this paper raises the issue of providing teacher colleges with more autonomy.

Key Words: teacher professionalism, teachers’ college, control, Tanzania