English language teaching and whole school professional development in Tanzania Dominic Wyse a , Ciaran Sugrue c, *, Alicia Fentiman b , Seonghye Moon b a Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom b University of Cambridge, United Kingdom c University College Dublin, Ireland 1. Introduction Global commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) has increased access to primary education for millions of children around the world especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the Republic of Tanzania significant strides have been made and the net enrolment ratio in primary school doubled from 54% in 2000 to 95.9% in 2010 (United Nations, 2010). Although this is a sign of clear improvement there are severe challenges facing schools and teachers in Tanzania, such as overcrowded classrooms, lack of resources, poor training, and low qualifications. Another key issue is the quality of education once pupils are in school. As part of thinking about quality there has been a growing interest in reforming teacher education particularly in teacher training colleges (Hardman et al., 2012; Vavrus and Bartlett, 2013) but little research has looked at how to improve teaching and learning in the context of schools. The context for research in Tanzania, as part of the wider development education field, includes work on the historical, political, cultural and economic implications of language of instruction. As part of colonial rule the British promoted the use of English as the medium of instruction in primary, secondary and tertiary education in Tanzania, and as an official language (Brock-Utne and Holmarsdottir, 2004). Shortly after independence in 1961 Kiswahili became the national language of the country. The rationale behind this decision was to unify Tanzanians with one ‘national’ language. This resulted in a deliberate political decision to use Kiswahili as the official language of the government (Barrett, 1994). Although Kiswahili became the medium of instruction in primary schools in 1967, the language of instruction in secondary schools remained as English. Debate has continued about language policy (or the lack of) in Tanzania (Brock-Utne and Holmarsdottir, 2004). Some advocate that Kiswahili should be the only medium of instruction throughout the educational system because it is claimed that English is not used outside the classroom, and hence it is recommended that the Tanzanian government revisit their language policy for education (Brock- Utne et al., 2003; Rubagumya, 1997). However, others such as Kadeghe (2010) fear that Tanzania is missing out on global opportunities because of poor grasp of English. Although a considerable amount of empirical work focusing on the language of instruction has been carried out, including some in Tanzania, research on the teaching of English in Tanzania is scarce. Evidence of the challenges for pupils learning English has been established by a significant study carried out by a non- governmental organisation which found large numbers of pupils International Journal of Educational Development xxx (2014) xxx–xxx A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Teaching English Leadership Capacity building Tanzania Primary school Pedagogy A B S T R A C T This paper reports a two-year in-depth qualitative enquiry into English language teaching in a typical primary school in an economically disadvantaged ward of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The research found that modest but significant changes to teachers’ pedagogy, practice and understanding of the teaching of English could be achieved. One of the most important changes was the teachers’ increased understanding of the benefits of engaging learners in a greater range of interaction styles. Another important change was greater understanding of the importance of communicative intent and semantics in the teaching of English. The whole school approach to teacher development, including the research team’s sustained engagement with the head teacher of the school, was an important context for the changes to practice. ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: School of Education, University College Dublin, Roebuck Castle, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Tel.: +353 17167944; fax: +353 17161143. E-mail address: ciaran.sugrue@ucd.ie (C. Sugrue). G Model EDEV-1561; No. of Pages 10 Please cite this article in press as: Wyse, D., et al., English language teaching and whole school professional development in Tanzania. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.04.002 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Educational Development jo ur n al ho m ep ag e: ww w.els evier .c om /lo cat e/ijed u d ev http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.04.002 0738-0593/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.