Advanced Planning: Reforming Teacher Education Curriculum in Universities to Prepare CBC Compliant Secondary School Teachers for East Africa

Edgar Fidel Nderego – The Open University of Tanzania
Clara Rupia – St. Augustine University of Tanzania
Daniel Oduor Onyango – St. Augustine University of Tanzania
Corresponding Author: jumadan06@gmail.com

Abstract: Rapid socioeconomic changes around the world such as globalization, a competitive, diverse, and complicated environment, and advanced technologies have impacted global educational needs of the 21st century. This circumstance has put pressure on educators to modify curriculum in order to accommodate the changes. Curriculum reforms have been done across all levels of education, including Teacher education in East Africa. However, for decade now, teacher education programs have been under fire owing to the reality that vast majority of graduate are ill-equipped for implementing CBC in secondary schools where this curriculum is implemented like Tanzania. The specific objective of this study was to establish whether universities incorporate CBC principles in Teacher education curriculum. The study reviewed literature in this area and found that majority of higher education institutions claimed to be providing competence-based and outcomes-based programs, but the available records stated otherwise. Furthermore, the findings show that universities deploy learning methods such as lecturing method which does not actively engage students and therefore does not contribute to acquisition of CBC competencies by student teachers. For the case of subjects/courses which are practical in nature such as teaching practice and microteaching, the findings reveal that they are poorly organized, supervised and evaluated, which contribute significantly to under prepared teachers. Based on the findings, the study recommends that universities should reform their teacher education curriculum and incorporate CBC principles in order for them to produce teachers with required competencies to implement CBC in secondary schools.