Walking in Unfamiliar Territory

Context of the Study

The study was conducted in seven primary schools in the Kinondoni district of Dar es Salaam in the Tanzania mainland. Tanzania, officially referred to as the United Republic of Tanzania, covers an area of 945,087 square kilometers, with an estimated population of 41,048,532 (Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], 2009). Dar es Salaam is its capital and the largest city, whereas Dodoma currently hosts the legislative offices and is planned as the new national capital (CIA, 2009). Tanzania is one of the countries in East Africa and borders the Indian Ocean to the east, Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. Five of these countries—Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda—form the East Africa Community, which is a union intended to promote political, economic, and social cooperation.

Tanzania, which was formerly called Tanganyika, gained its independence from Britain in 1961 and in 1964 joined with Zanzibar. It was after this merger that it was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on October 29, 1964. Kiswahili is the official language spoken by the majority of the people, though there are more than 130 ethnic groups divided into 26 administrative regions. Tanzania’s economy is mainly agricultural (CIA, 2010).

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID, 2009) noted that, despite years of substantial donor assistance, Tanzania remains one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 159th out of 177 countries. The report further noted that poverty in Tanzania not only impedes future economic development and exacts extreme human costs but also fosters an environment conducive to radicalization and terrorism. The USAID basic education program in Tanzania, according to the 2009 report, has been designed to promote the interrelated objectives of prosperity, security, and stability.

According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (2008), the education system in Tanzania provides for 2 years of preschool education, 7 years of primary education, 4 years of secondary education, 2 years of advanced-level secondary education, and 3 or more years of tertiary or higher education. The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training acknowledged that the nation has inadequately trained teachers and recognized that it is its responsibility to train teachers for preprimary, primary, and secondary schools. Looking into the future, the ministry indicated that there are plans to train more educators to address recent increases in pupil enrolment (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2008).

In Tanzania’s vision for 2025, the local government reform program provides for decentralization and devolution of functions and financing. Under this system, the local councils will be the appointing authorities and employers for teachers, whereas the ministry will set policy and engage in monitoring and evaluation (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2005). The municipal education officer will continue to be in overall charge of education matters in each administrative district. Within the district there will continue to be ward education coordinators who supervise education matters. A typical ward is composed of about 10 schools. At the school level there is a school management committee, whereas the headteacher handles the day-to-day administration of the school. The headteacher may have between one and four assistant headteachers, depending on the student population and the number of shifts the school operates. Generally, primary schools in Dar es Salaam tend to have large student populations, ranging between 500 and 2,000.

The language of instruction in public primary schools in Tanzania is Kiswahili, which is the national language as well. The schools in which this study was conducted are located on the periphery of Dar es Salaam, where the physical infrastructure is underdeveloped. The communities surrounding the schools and from which the schools draw their student populations are largely made up of low-income families. The low economic status of the parents is reflected in the schools’ inadequate infrastructure and resources.

Some of the difficulties facing schools in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania more generally may be caused by inequities in school resources. For example, there was a huge gap in student–teacher ratios among the schools studied, with the lowest being 32:1 whereas the highest was 135:1. The latter pupil–teacher ratio is well above the national average of 56:1 (Wood, 2008).

Literature Review

Headteacher preparation processes and experiences vary greatly across nations. In settings such as the United Kingdom, Norway, and the United States (Tjeldvoll, Wales, & Welle-Strand, 2005) and parts of Asia, such as in Hong Kong (Ming, 2005), there are specific leadership preparation programs designed and delivered for school leaders before they are appointed. Indeed, it is important that school leaders be selected on the basis of having more than successful teaching experience, as important as that is for new headteachers (Karstanje & Webber, 2008). There should be specialized training provided both before headteachers are appointed and while they practice in their leadership positions (Webber & Scott, 2009).

The need for initial leadership preparation is further emphasized because of the increasing complexity of exercising school leadership (Wildy, Clarke, & Slater, 2007). That is, school leaders must be prepared for the challenges of family instability, poverty, disease, insufficient teaching and learning resources, and leadership succession planning, among other aspects. These aspects are particularly important in developing contexts such as Tanzania.

In countries such as the United States, the number of teachers applying for leadership positions has declined according to Johnson-Taylor and Martin (2007), although Pijanowski and Brady (2009) cautioned that shortages likely are regional and dependent, at least in part, on geography and socioeconomic factors. Nonetheless, the shortage of applicants is a reality for some communities, and it can be argued that there is merit in considering Shen, Cooley, and Wegenke’s (2004) proposal for redefining the major responsibilities of the principalship and restructuring it to make the job more attractive to potential principals. They further suggested that it is important to recruit and retain the best candidates. It is, however, important to note that the recommendations fit within a clear implementation structure since most American school principals are trained in formal preparation programs at 4-year colleges and universities (Nelson et al., 2008). This implies structured leadership preparation that has been operational over a long period. The study done in the United States by Nelson et al. (2008), however, found that despite the fairly long tradition in leadership preparation, the preparation program for the leaders in the study may have focused more on technical managerial skills as opposed to other equally important aspects of leadership such as instructional leadership and competent “lifeworld leaders” (Nelson et al., 2008, p. 697).

Dempster and Berry (2003) pointed to the need for principals in Australia to go through appropriate professional programs so they can cope with the plethora of changes occurring in schools in that country. The competing demands for principals’ attention include child abuse, gender equity, harassment and violence, and the changing information and communication technologies used in schools. It is not enough, according to other Australian researchers (Anderson, Clarke, & Vivovich, 2009), to learn leadership challenges on the job. Rather, it is important that new headteachers be prepared more appropriately for their first appointments and that they receive support in the early stages of their careers.

Scott and Webber (2008) pointed to the varied responsibilities of principals in Western nations, including instructional leadership, financial management, policy development, decision making, staff mediation, negotiation, and marketing the school, among other roles. They also mentioned the important aspect of initial training for teachers through undergraduate programs that do not necessarily prepare teachers to become leaders even though the same teachers form the pool from which school leaders are appointed. They argued for the need for professional development opportunities for teachers aspiring to become school leaders. This scenario in Western countries is different from the situation in Tanzania and other developing countries in that training in a degree program for a teacher is definitely more advanced than the programs at the certificate level and occasionally diploma level (which is a layer lower than the first degree) for the pool of teachers who become school leaders. The qualification of a primary school teacher in Tanzania may imply more need for leadership preparation for such school teachers because the complexity of such aspects as financial management principles and processes may require higher academic qualifications coupled with experience through on-the-job practice.

Citing reforms to the education system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Wong (2004) referred to the 2002 refined proposal on principal preparation that recommended different continuing professional development for aspiring principals, newly appointed principals, and serving principals. For aspiring principals, they introduced a certificate for principalship (CFP) as a quality assurance measure on the minimum requirements for appointment to the position of school principals. The CFP was implemented in September 2002 and took the form of a needs analysis, a course on leadership and management, and development of a portfolio. For Hong Kong this was a positive shift as previously new principals were required to go through a 9- to 10-day induction course that helped them acquire basic management knowledge and skills. The developers of the Hong Kong reform considered the leadership preparation programs in other parts of the world such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia and incorporated homegrown ideas to get a hybrid program relevant for the Hong Kong context. This is an important approach for a country like Tanzania to learn from in contextualizing leadership preparation.

Writing about leadership preparation for Hong Kong principals, Walker and Dimmock (2006) presented the key features of the program as mechanisms and content to maximize contextual and cultural sensitivity, linkages between leadership and outcomes, opportunities for reflection, intense involvement of experienced practitioners as mentors or coaches, intentional design, formal and informal networking, meaningful evaluation, and participant control. They further clarified that it is a 12-month program for beginning principals that starts at the end of their first year in post. The fact that the principals were allowed 1 year of practice before enrolling in the program may imply that the first year in post is a milestone, and, hence, there is a need for the principals to gain some experience before they engage in the practice-based Blue Skies program.

Additional areas of study that should be explored by prospective school leaders have emerged in recent years. For example, school leaders need to understand how they can support teachers by providing access to professional learning networks on an ongoing basis (Scott & Scott, 2010). Also, Banks (2004) highlighted the need for educators to promote cross-cultural literacy among educators so they can better meet the needs of students from different cultural groups. Bottery (2006) described the need to explore the challenges posed by global migration and shifting power bases so that social justice can be achieved for members of minority groups and lower socioeconomic segments within societies. Leithwood and Jantzi (2008) noted the need for educational leaders to understand how the development of a collective sense of agency among the members of a school community can promote effective teaching and learning. In addition, prospective school leaders must understand and explore their fundamental educational values and beliefs so they can understand better how those values and beliefs shape the cultures of schools (Mulford, 2008). Clearly, all of these areas of study cannot be addressed within the relatively abbreviated leadership preparation programs that are possible in the context of East Africa. Therefore, ongoing professional development is critical if school leaders wish to continue to expand their effectiveness throughout their careers (Steffy, Wolfe, Pasch, & Enz, 2000).

Although not much literature is available about headteacher preparation in East Africa, a nationwide program for primary school headteachers was offered from 1996 through 2000 in Kenya. The Primary School Management (PRISM) project was implemented using a cascade mode of training delivery. This gave an opportunity to 16,700 headteachers in Kenya to participate in school management learning activities with a range of educational stakeholders including inspectors of schools, fellow headteachers, and community members (Crossley et al., 2005). However, PRISM was implemented with donor funding and, therefore, had a specific implementation period that ended with the funding. Nonetheless, PRISM promoted gains such as the formation of headteacher support groups, which brought together headteachers in different educational zones to support and learn from each other (Waudo, Juma, Herriot, & Mwirotsi, 2002), although the impact of PRISM over time is tenuous. However, PRISM offered one model of headteacher professional development that can inform similar programming in neighboring Tanzania.

Kitavi (1995) studied beginning secondary school principals in Kenya and found problems similar to those experienced by beginning headteachers in primary schools in Tanzania. The problems he identified included inadequate physical facilities, insufficient school equipment, overcrowded classrooms, and students who could not afford to pay school fees or purchase books. He recommended the use of experienced principals as mentors for beginning principals. This recommendation, although made 15 years in the past and not as influential as the author likely hoped, continues to be an important learning possibility for novice headteachers in Kenya.

Sserunjogi (2002) acknowledged that very little research had been done on school leadership in Uganda. To address this gap, he conducted a study in 10 schools to establish the challenges primary school headteachers faced in implementing universal primary education (UPE). The aim of UPE was to make basic education accessible to the majority of Ugandans, and so it meant increasing enrolment in schools. The problems Sserunjogi described in the context of Uganda were similar to those observed in Kenya by Kitavi (1995), for example, a lack of adequate facilities, inadequate funding, and insufficient parental involvement. These are common problems for schools throughout East Africa, and they provide a strong case for more appropriate preparation of school leaders who must address the challenges in their daily practice.

There are other important aspects on school leadership as pointed out by Oduro, Dachi, and Fertig (2008). They pointed to the importance of providing headteachers with skills that would enable them to handle the decentralized decision-making policies that have been put in place in Tanzania if we expect decentralization to work in elevating the quality of education in Tanzania primary schools. However, they also point to a common phenomenon to Ghana, Tanzania, and Pakistan, which is gender underrepresentation in school leadership. They argued that few women are involved in leadership, especially in rural schools. According to their conclusion, this has implications for enhancing quality learning among girls because of defects in gender role modeling.

The literature reviewed in this section points to the important role of leadership preparation and to the need for improved headteacher preparation (Onguko et al., 2008). The Tanzania educational leadership programs can draw from what has already been tried elsewhere while contextualizing the leadership preparation programs to suit the needs of the nation.

Method

The research question for this study was the following: How useful are principal preparation programs to novice principals? The study involved the administration of questionnaires and interviews with seven headteachers of primary schools in their first year of appointment.

The questionnaires and semistructured interview guides initially were created by members of the larger research team conducting the ISPP (http://people.ucalgary.ca/~cwebber/ISPP/) based on an earlier phase of the ISPP in which the following aspects of principal preparation were examined: client group, program content, structure, deliverers, delivery modes, credentialing, and pedagogy (e.g., Onguko et al., 2008). Subsequently, the questionnaires (ISPP Questionnaire) and semistructured interview guides (ISPP Interview Questions) were piloted, modified, and employed in a series of case studies conducted in several countries (e.g., Slater et al., 2008; Wildy & Clarke, 2008). The instruments, included here as an appendix, focused on the types of formal and informal professional experiences headteachers had prior to their initial appointments, motivations for seeking positions as headteachers, challenges in the early stages of being headteachers, and topics of study that were or could have been useful in preparation for headteacher positions.

Strong efforts were made to establish the credibility and trustworthiness of the instruments during the iterative process, described above, of piloting and modifying the documents as they were used in other countries. Nonetheless, the research team conducting the study described here learned that despite English being the language that study participants had used in high school and in teachers college, the seven headteachers had difficulty completing the questionnaire. Therefore, the questionnaire data were not as detailed as expected. However, this limitation was addressed by translating the interview questions into Kiswahili and conducting the interviews in that language. As a result, the questionnaire data were complemented by lengthy and far more detailed interview data.

The headteachers were all drawn from Kinondoni district of Dar es Salaam city. Utilizing a purposeful sampling approach (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2010), the study was limited to the peripheral areas of Kinondoni district of Dar es Salaam because new headteachers tend to be posted in neighborhoods like this, which are farther from the center of the city. Therefore, the Kinondoni district represented the typical placement for new headteachers in the Dar es Salaam region. For the purposes of this report, all names of individuals and institutions are pseudonyms.

To identify research participants, the researchers visited the Regional Education Office in Dar es Salaam and requested the roll of headteachers in their first 3 years of appointment to the position. However, the roll was not current. Therefore, a variation of the snowball sampling technique (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2009) was used, and two of the headteachers who were on the roll provided by the Regional Education Office were asked to help identify seven headteachers in their first year of headship. The researchers then visited the seven headteachers in their schools, shared the objectives and requirements of the study, and invited them to consider participating in the study. They were all willing to participate and provided their consent for their participation. The group of seven headteachers comprised six males and one female; this gender profile in the participant group is representative of the population of primary school principals in Tanzania (Oduro et al., 2008).

Participants were invited to complete a written questionnaire that focused on critical incidents experienced by new headteachers. The researchers traveled to the schools to administer the questionnaires and then returned 1 week later to collect them. After the questionnaires were returned, face-to-face interviews with individual headteachers were conducted at the Jamii Bora University campus. The purpose of the interviews was to follow up on issues arising from the questionnaire responses and from the literature on principal preparation. Interviews were audiotaped with participants’ consent. The instruments for this study (questionnaire and interview schedule) were adapted from those used in other ISPP settings to suit the East African context. For example, the interview questions were translated into Kiswahili for ease of communication with the participants in Dar es Salaam since the language of instruction in primary schools is Kiswahili. In the following section, the data analysis process is presented.

Data Analysis

The audio-recorded data were first organized using the open-source audio editing software program called Audacity. This enabled the researchers to identify key data that were consistent with the research questions while cutting out the noise and wait time between the interviewees’ statements. The use of Audacity enabled the researchers to eliminate the need for transcribing. Specific clips of key data were identified and stored as data files on the data analysis matrix within thematic categories. The clips were then transcribed and fitted within the data analysis matrix.

Data from both the questionnaires and the audio interviews were analyzed to identify patterns and themes that addressed the study question. As Krathwohl (1998) reported, through coding we can attach meaning to words, phrases, and events. The patterns and themes that emerged came about through an iterative process of replaying and relistening to audio clips, (re)reading questionnaire responses and transcribed data, and (re)thinking the data (Lichtman, 2006). These themes were presented in the analysis matrix for each participant. The thematic content of each research participant led to the narrative accounts. This stage of data analyses involved the selection and examination of specific narrative accounts, which is a form of analysis described by Clarke and Wildy (2004), Denzin and Lincoln (2005), and Chase (2005). Key content was identified and attached to codes that were extracted from the data analysis matrix, leading to flowing thematic narratives for each participant case. The themes that emerged from the data analysis are presented in the next section.

Findings

The findings of the research are presented in relation to the themes that emerged from the data: previous experience, preparation for leadership, and challenges. Pseudonyms have been used to identify study participants.

Discussion and Implications for Leadership Preparation in Tanzania

This study was qualitative and the findings cannot be generalized to all primary headteachers in Tanzania. However, it is evident, for the study participants, that there are very limited opportunities for formal preparation programs for headteachers before and after assuming headship positions. Most of the participants stated that they had not attended any preparation programs. They claimed to have learned on the job through interaction with the headteachers they served under as assistant headteachers. Thus, they learned about leadership through an apprenticeship model through which they acquired some leadership skills from their headteachers while serving as assistant headteachers. The experiences of working with their previous headteachers helped in preparing them for the headship. The headteachers, therefore, appear to play a key role in preparing their assistants for future roles as headteachers through an apprenticeship process. This apprenticeship approach, however, is not a formal arrangement but rather an ad hoc one implemented in individual schools. What is not clear is how this process is conducted and how viable it is. Its effectiveness, though, is questionable. The mere fact that the process is ad hoc suggests that it is unlikely to engage the prospective headteachers with adequate experiences and fully equip them for the complexity of their roles (Wildy & Clarke, 2008). Besides, it is likely that they are conducted by headteachers who themselves had no formal preparation and might not have the mentoring skills necessary for supporting their colleagues effectively.

Two of the headteachers mentioned that they earned a Jamii Bora University certificate in educational leadership programs when they were assistant headteachers. This was the only formal preparation they went through while serving as assistant headteachers. Although they mentioned the usefulness of these programs, it should be noted that these were basically short and isolated occurrences and not adequate for preparing headteachers to face the enormous challenges of the headship especially in the challenging contexts such as those where this study was conducted. It is clear that more needs to be done to help headteachers acquire leadership knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for the ever challenging and complex job of providing leadership to school communities.

Save for the two headteachers who attended the Jamii Bora University leadership preparation programs, we noted that there was no mention of the Maboresho Institute, the public-sector institution whose mandate is to prepare educational leaders in Tanzania. That none of the research participant had ever attended any training at the Maboresho Institute, despite some of them having served in leadership positions as assistant heads, raises questions about the capacity and priorities of the Maboresho Institute in providing leadership training for the serving and prospective headteachers in Tanzania.

The inadequacy of principal preparation through the apprenticeship model and programs offered by the Jamii Bora University is further reflected in the limited roles these headteachers play in their day-to-day work. It appeared that they basically deal with the issues of pupils’ lack of discipline, procurement of resources, and attempts to work with community members to help solve school problems. Any leadership preparation program needs to take headteachers beyond these tasks and prepare them for performing the three core broader sets of educational leadership practices of setting direction, developing people, and developing the organization (Leithwood & Riehl, 2003).

Since most of the teachers in primary schools who become headteachers are not required to be hold university degrees, they are not eligible to enter the master’s degree programs in educational administration provided by the main university of Tanzania. The university on the other hand has not come down to the level of offering nonacademic practice-oriented programs for practitioners such as headteachers who do not have a first degree. This, coupled with the fact that for a long time Tanzania had relied on the government as the sole provider of services and programs in many sectors, means the public–private partnership model is not developed. The implication of this is that private-sector players in school leadership preparation are yet to emerge in Tanzania apart from the Jamii Bora University, which provides programs for only a minor population, mainly in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.

The reconstitution of the expanded East Africa Community that brings together five countries, namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, may be a good option for cross-border initiatives in leadership preparation. Some of the countries, like Kenya and Uganda, have more experience in private-sector participation in education, coupled with the fact that there are more institutions that provide leadership preparation in Kenya, as reported in our previous research (Onguko et al., 2008). This is possibly an opportunity for Tanzania to benefit from leadership preparation programming under the auspices of the East Africa Community. However, such an arrangement will require not only private-sector initiatives but also top-level political leadership to minimize the possible bottlenecks such as permission for cross-border service delivery including employment permission for citizens shifting from one country to the next. So far only Rwanda has opened up free employment opportunities for citizens of other countries, whereas the other four countries require work permits for the citizens of the sister countries.

It is not surprising that having leadership qualifications emerged as a weak factor in principal appointments, given that research in Africa has found that headteachers are mostly appointed on the basis of their performance as teachers and not on the basis of their leadership qualifications (Bush & Oduro, 2006). This might be an indication that formal leadership qualifications are not valued in the appointment of headteachers. Besides, the procedures for headship appointment are also not clear to teachers and may not be followed strictly by the appointing authority.

However, what emerged as a prominent step toward moving to the headship was having served as an assistant headteacher. All the headteachers involved served as assistants before being appointed as headteachers. This seems to be a good practice especially in Tanzania, where there is no reliable preparation of heads prior to their appointments. Having served at the assistant level for some time may give one a feel for the leadership challenges schools face and a few strategies for handling those challenges. Nevertheless, this should not be a substitute for formal leadership preparation for the prospective and newly appointed headteachers.

Headteachers in East Africa work in extremely challenging contexts. The schools are poorly resourced, in terms of both personnel and materials. The communities’ support is poor because of poverty and low parents’ awareness of the importance of education to their children. The schools have to deal with several issues the students bring to school from their community such as pregnancies, poor personal hygiene, HIV/AIDS, orphanage placements, and child labor, all of which feature prominently in the Tanzania context. These are contextual realities that make the work of the headteachers extremely difficult.

Recommendations

In this section we present some recommendations that are derived from the findings of the study. The recommendations are divided into two subsections. The first subsection consists of recommendations for leadership preparation programs, whereas the second is composed of recommendations for further research on leadership preparation in Tanzania.

Conclusion

It is disheartening that there are insufficient headteacher preparation programs for leaders of primary schools in Dar es Salaam and possibly throughout Tanzania. Considering that Dar es Salaam is the commercial capital of the United Republic of Tanzania, the other regions of the country may be worse off in terms of headteacher preparation. The need to change this scenario is now greater than ever before. It should be possible for the government of Tanzania to increase the capacity of public and private providers of leadership preparation programs. Public–private partnerships may be an option that can be tried in Tanzania. Based on the views of the seven case study participants, it is safe to conclude that headteachers in Tanzania walk into very unfamiliar territories when they are appointed.