Faculty of Education

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Browsing Faculty of Education by Author "Fussy, Daniel"

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    The Hurdles to Fostering Research in Tanzanian Universities
    (Higher Education, 2019) Fussy, Daniel
    Universities across the world are normally called upon to be innovative and generate relevant knowledge to address context-related issues afflicting society. This central role of universities notwithstanding, the involvement in research by African universities and academics, has been minimal when compared with other universities and academics in other parts of the world. This raises the question of what is exactly happening in the region’s universities regarding the development of research. As such, this study establishes the hurdles of developing university research in Tanzania, which directly falls within the wider expectations of developing a research culture in developing countries. The study involved higher education policy makers, senior university leaders and academic staff members who were sourced from four universities and two non-university institutions which oversee the Tanzania’s higher education sector. Based on interviews and document analyses, the study has established various hurdles, ranging from cultural, political and structural to institutional. The study situates the hurdles and associated debilitating effects in the broader African and developing world context that share similar social, educational, political and economic characteristics to that of Tanzania. Additionally, the study adds to the existing body of knowledge on university research development in developing countries’ higher education systems.
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    The Institutionalisation of Teacher Ethics in Tanzania’s Secondary Schools: A School Head’s Perspective
    (Pakistan Journal of Education, 2018) Fussy, Daniel
    This paper explores practices that school heads employ to institutionalise teacher ethics in Tanzania’s secondary schools. It draws on qualitative data, generated through in-depth face-to-face interviews and document analyses. Secondary school heads, teachers and students from Iringa Municipality were involved in the study. The findings demonstrate that school heads employed several strategies to institutionalise teacher ethics, which include staff induction, allotment of weekly virtue practices, supervising and counselling individual teachers, assembling staff meetings and posting ethics related placards on staff room noticeboards. The study has shown that most of the practices lacked a profound impact on shaping teachers’ professional conduct. The study adds knowledge to school leadership literature from Tanzania, particularly on the aspect of teacher ethics. Accordingly, the study recommends that school heads should institute mentoring programmes where by early career teachers are attached to veteran teachers to regularly enhance their professional knowledge and behaviour. School heads should exemplify ethical conduct within and outside school premises by serving as role models for the teachers to facilitate the promotion of teacher ethics. Furthermore, education officers at the regional and district level should provide professional development programmes for school heads to further raise the awareness and confidence of school heads’ professional obligations.
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    Policy Directions for Promoting University Research in Tanzania
    (Studies in Higher Education, 2018) Fussy, Daniel
    This paper examines the influence of Tanzania’s higher education policy context on promoting research within Tanzanian universities. It focuses both on the prescribed mission of universities and the way in which the government provides funding for the universities in the country. Data were obtained through document analysis and interviews with national higher education policy-makers, as well as senior university leaders and academic staff members sourced from four leading universities. The findings show that the Tanzanian higher education sector operates under a homogeneous university model, wherein each university is prescribed as a research university. Indeed, direct institutional allocation has remained a dominant method of funding universities in general, and research in particular, since Tanzania gained political independence in 1961. The paper, therefore, recommends a reform of the national higher education policy to bridge the gap between policy articulations and implementation on the ground.
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    Reflections on the Historical Antecedents to Revitalize Higher Education Research in Africa.
    (Educational Process: International Journal, 2018) Fussy, Daniel
    A vibrant higher education sector is a cornerstone to the production and application of cutting-edge knowledge and human resources relevant to spearheading socioeconomic development. While this is true, Africa has a discouraging performance in research, as compared with other world regions. In raising its research performance, Africa is now receiving considerable attention to revitalize its higher education sector from both global and local forces. In a bid to enhance success of different local and global interventions that Africa is currently receiving, it is imperative to revisit the past to comprehend what has made Africa’s higher education research be where it is today. Informed by the postcolonial theory, this paper seeks to establish the historical antecedents that have undermined the development of research in Africa. Several antecedents are established including the role of colonial higher education policies, incompatible supranational donor policies, unstable political landscape, interrupted academic freedom and autonomy, and unfamiliar language of academic, research and scholarly communication. The paper argues that any initiative that aimed at revitalising research in Africa should place the present higher education research doldrums in its wider socio-historical context where Africa’s higher education sector had been hindered for decades by challenges, as discussed in this paper.
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    Research Dissemination Practices in Tanzania: Limitations and Potentialities
    (International Journal of Educational Development, 2018) Fussy, Daniel
    Disseminating research findings to both academic and non-academic fraternities is imperative for effectively fulfilling both academic and developmental roles. However, efforts to disseminate research outputs beyond academic circles are still limited, neglected and rarely questioned. This paper explores research dissemination practices engaged by researchers in four Tanzanian universities to establish their limitations and potentialities. The findings indicate that practices towards research dissemination continue favouring academic fraternities and there is growing belief among researchers that research is conducted principally for publication and academic qualification attainment rather than as something that researchers can directly use to change society and bring about development. The paper provides some recommendations for the potential reform and improvement of the dissemination of research findings to both academic and non-academic audiences.
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    The Status of Academic Advising in Tanzanian Universities
    (KEDI Journal of Educational Policy, 2018) Fussy, Daniel
    The need to enhance students’ participation, retention, and academic success has compelled universities to provide student advisory services. This study examines the status of academic advising in Tanzania, focusing on the significance, structure and incentives provided. Faculty members, students, and institutional documents informed the data generation process. The findings show that the academic advising programme is generally perceived as significant in enhancing students’ academic and social integration into the university life. The shared model is used to provide the advisory service based primarily on the prescriptive approach. Training and incentives are not provided to advisors, something which rendered the advisory service to operate in a haphazard fashion. The study offers recommendations to help higher education policy makers and practitioners to improve the delivery of student advisory services to attain higher retention, participation, and graduation rates.
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    Tanzania: Revisiting Eastern and Central African Education Systems.
    (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014) Fussy, Daniel; Anangisye, William A. L.
    Generally, the educational foundations laid by African traditional or indigenous education systems in the pre-external word contact period tend to be sidelined. Rarely are education values inherited from the pre-colonial education system acknowledged in different levels of education. For example, the craft of oral storytelling as a teaching technique widely used in lower levels of education owes much to the African traditional education (Pence & Schafer, 2006; Anangisye, 2008). In Tanzania, such traditional roots tend to be ignored because the current education system is, a large extent, premised on the formal education system introduced by the German and British colonial powers. Historically, such designed to perpetuate colonial values as well as address and meet colonial demands. This formal colonial education was only provided to a handful of select Africans in Tanganyika and Zanzibar. In the post-Independence periods in 1961 and 1963 for Tanganyika and Zanzibar, respectively, the two nations embarked on concerted efforts to overhaul the education system oriented towards meeting the needs of the colonial powers. These efforts became even more meaningful when the two nations forged the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar on 26 April 1964. Even at this early stage, it was acknowledged that the education push in the country had to acknowledge the beliefs and values of Africans. This became even more pronounced in the aftermath of the 1967 Arusha Declaration that gave birth to the Education for Self-Reliance (ESR) policy. This educational drive geared towards building an egalitarian society was premised on the African values of communalism, rather than the Western-derived values of individualism. This educational orientation, much in line with the argument of this chapter, sought to redress the common belief among colonial administrations that Africa’s education slate was not tabula rasa by making the African values centre-stage in the promotion of populist education for national development. This chapter revisits the development and trends of education system in Tanzania. In particular, the chapter draws on different key educational issues under the following sub-sections: introduction; background to education developments; basic structures of education; goals and purposes of education; nature of curriculum; school management; nature of teacher education, recruitment and supply; remunerations; education professionalism; and the conclusion.