Viewpoints to ICT Practices and Hindrances in Tanzanian Secondary Schools and Teacher Training Colleges Focus on classroom teachers Olivier Ufitese Muhoza School of Information and Communication Technology Royal Institute of Technology-KTH Stockholm, Sweden olimuhozau@ymail.com Naghmeh Aghaee Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden nam@dsv.su.se Matti Tedre Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden firstname.lastname@acm.org Henrik Hansson Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden henrik.hansson@dsv.su.se Abstract—On the policy level, Tanzania has strongly committed to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supported education on all levels of education. National policy documents give ICT a high priority in development of the country's educational system. Curricula have been revamped to accommodate for increased role of ICT in the society and education. Also educational institutions have explicated high expectations of ICT in the process of "massification of education." Several research studies, however, have showed little change in the classrooms. Surveys and case studies have showed that on the way from policy documents to strategy level and implementation level, something gets missing. The lack of ICT in education is clear in primary and secondary school, which is unsurprising, given that majority of schools also lack electricity and basic facilities, including proper classrooms, tables, and books. This study sets out to investigate; using thematic interviews of secondary school teachers in Tanzania, what processes and support structures do teachers consider to be lacking in terms of ICT supported education. Informants from teacher training colleges were also involved in order to bring out viewpoints from teacher training. The results confirmed a large number of earlier results, divided to six categories: school policy, implementation and administration on the school level, access to ICT, leadership and management, school culture, and teacher training. A number of new factors were also pinpointed: teachers' lack of awareness of government policies and documentation on several levels, lack of pedagogical readiness for e- learning and blended learning, and cultural concerns. Concerning what should come first, there was a chicken-and-egg-problem: it makes little sense to invest in rapidly aging ICT infrastructure and facilities if there is no human capacity to make use of those investments; and it makes little sense to invest in human capacity if there is no technological infrastructure to put quickly aging technical know-how into immediate use. Keywords— Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Educational Technology, ICT management, Tanzania, Teacher education, Classroom Activities, Teachers’ expectations, Teachers’ experiences, Culture. I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Many developing countries continue to embrace creative and innovative ways to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) in education [41, 49]. So far, in the processes of integrating ICT in the classroom, Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Culture (TMEC) [54], noted a number of problems along the way. TMEC’s list of problems included a teacher education curriculum that focuses more on imparting academic content than developing professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Curricular deficiencies surely contribute to the problems, but the literature suggests that they might be just the tip of the iceberg (e.g. [55, 18]). There are various views to the benefits of ICT in education, ranging from disruptive to neutral to positive. For example, one study reported that using the computer enables the learner to concentrate and significantly improve the learning experience [15]. ICT is a fundamental tool and some have even tied ICT in education with national development [26]. ICT at secondary education is a key factor for increased economic and social development [56]. ICT is becoming an indispensable part of education, giving people the power to realize some of their aspirations. The crucial task is to choose how to implement the technology that it facilitates learning [49]. At the moment, Tanzania does provide computers and Internet accesses to a few schools [31]. The Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training [44] reported that one of the ICT objectives in Tanzanian education is to 2014 International Conference on Teaching and Learning in Computing and Engineering 978-1-4799-3592-5/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE DOI 10.1109/LaTiCE.2014.31 133