Early Learning Innovation Fund Evaluation Final Report

This is a formative evaluation of the Hewlett Foundation's Early Learning Innovation Fund that began in 2011 as part of the Quality Education in Developing Countries (QEDC) initiative.  The Fund has four overarching objectives, which are to: promote promising approaches to improve children's learning; strengthen the capacity of organizations implementing those approaches; strengthen those organizations' networks and ownership; and grow 20 percent of implementing organizations into significant players in the education sector. The Fund's original design was to create a "pipeline" of innovative approaches to improve learning outcomes, with the assumption that donors and partners would adopt the most successful ones. A defining feature of the Fund was that it delivered assistance through two intermediary support organizations (ISOs), rather than providing funds directly to implementing organizations. Through an open solicitation process, the Hewlett Foundation selected Firelight Foundation and TrustAfrica to manage the Fund. Firelight Foundation, based in California, was founded in 1999 with a mission to channel resources to community-based organizations (CBOs) working to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families in Africa. It supports 12 implementing organizations in Tanzania for the Fund. TrustAfrica, based in Dakar, Senegal, is a convener that seeks to strengthen African-led initiatives addressing some of the continent's most difficult challenges. The Fund was its first experience working specifically with early learning and childhood development organizations. Under the Fund, it supported 16 such organizations: one in Mali and five each in Senegal, Uganda and Kenya. At the end of 2014, the Hewlett Foundation commissioned Management Systems International (MSI) to conduct a mid-term evaluation assessing the implementation of the Fund exploring the extent to which it achieved intended outcomes and any factors that had limited or enabled its achievements. It analyzed the support that the ISOs provided to their implementing organizations, with specific focus on monitoring and evaluation (M&E). The evaluation included an audit of the implementing organizations' M&E systems and a review of the feasibility of compiling data collected to support an impact evaluation. Finally, the Foundation and the ISOs hoped that this evaluation would reveal the most promising innovations and inform planning for Phase II of the Fund. The evaluation findings sought to inform the Hewlett Foundation and other donors interested in supporting intermediary grant-makers, early learning innovations and the expansion of innovations. TrustAfrica and Firelight Foundation provided input to the evaluation's scope of work. Mid-term evaluation reports for each ISO provided findings about their management of the Fund's Phase I and recommendations for Phase II. This final evaluation report will inform donors, ISOs and other implementing organizations about the best approaches to support promising early learning innovations and their expansion. The full report outlines findings common across both ISOs' experience and includes recommendations in four key areas: adequate time; appropriate capacity building; advocacy and scaling up; and evaluating and documenting innovations. Overall, both Firelight Foundation and TrustAfrica supported a number of effective innovations working through committed and largely competent implementing organizations. The program's open-ended nature avoided being prescriptive in its approach, but based on the lessons learned in this evaluation and the broader literature, the Hewlett Foundation and other donors could have offered more guidance to ISOs to avoid the need to continually relearn some lessons. For example, over the evaluation period, it became increasingly evident that the current context demands more focused advance planning to measure impact on beneficiaries and other stakeholders and a more concrete approach to promoting and resourcing potential scale-up. The main findings from the evaluation and recommendations are summarized here

Convergence of Distance Education and Conventional Learning: Innovations and Developments at the Open University of Tanzania

Abstract: The Open University of Tanzania (OUT) undertakes instructional delivery using various blended learning media including print, ICTs, electronic platforms, enhanced face to face, special seminars and contact programmes. Initially, it was envisioned that the University will use a low resource teaching package, consisting of offline media. Admittedly, the blending of offline and online learning enhances significantly pedagogical effectiveness of the instructional methodology. Thus, in pursuing its Vision and fulfilling its Mission, a conventional learning institution like the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) subscribes to application of ICTs in the enhancement of academic delivery and management. Meanwhile, the Vision and Mission of both UDSM and OUT bear striking similarities, implying a convergence of distance and conventional learning. Employing desktop and descriptive research methods, the study explores innovations and developments at the OUT in the last two decades, with a view to demonstrating the salient trends of the phenomenon of the convergence, within the context of the three dimensions underlying the process of mainstreaming of distance education. They include the achievement of parity of esteem between conventional and distance education; the convergence of the means of instructional delivery, student groups, and types of institutions and the incorporation of distance education's constituent elements, particularly its philosophy of outreach, into the mainstream education system. The findings of the study show that concerted efforts have been made by both the OUT and UDSM to integrate online media in their instructional methodologies in the last two decades. In the specific case of the OUT, as a result of such innovations, print has been dislodged as the lead medium in distance education delivery. However, in spite of the convergence in instructional delivery, achievement of parity of esteem between conventional and distance education and the integration of distance education's constituent elements into the main education system are still out of sight. The study stresses that while indiscriminate adoption and employment of online learning will eventually undermine the vision and mission of distance education as well as conventional education institutions, careful selection and systematic application of the same will yield better results to both institutions.Key Words: Blended Learning, Open and Distance Learning, Mainstreaming Distance Education, Lead Mediu

Children in an Urban Tanzania

One in four children being born in today‟s Tanzania is likely to be growing up in an urban area. It is projected to be one in three in the short time span of one generation. Tanzania is more urban than it perceives itself and official figures disclose. Urban Tanzanians feel emotionally rooted in their villages of origin rather than in the cities and towns where one quarter of the total population lives. Urbanisation figures fail to account for extensive high density areas just because they are not officially classified as urban. Despite a persisting rural self-representation, Tanzania is one of the fastest urbanising countries in one of the world‟s fastest urbanising regions. The nearly half urban population aged 0-18 may well be the first truly urbanised generation in the history of the nation.\ud As urbanisation is rapidly transforming the physical, social and economic landscape of the country, how has Tanzania equipped itself to provide adequate water, sanitation, health care, education, protection services to meet the fundamental needs and rights of a swelling number of urban children and communities? National policy and programmatic frameworks still broadly target rural poverty, perceived as the nation‟s core development challenge. Urban poverty, growing alongside urban affluence, remains mainly unaccounted for and, as a result, unaddressed. The condition of poor and marginalised urban groups escapes official urban figures. Standard urban-rural disaggregation generates statistical averages that overshadow sub-municipal disparities. Also poverty lines tend to underestimate actual poverty. Based on mere consumption levels, they disregard living conditions, thus leaving unaccounted for several necessities that poor households are normally forced to acquire through cash purchases in a monetised urban economy. As a result, urban poverty is broadly overlooked and poor urban children, lost in skewed official estimates and tucked away in peripheral unplanned urban fringes, risk remaining invisible in development policy and investments. In-depth analysis based on sub-municipal data is urgently needed to accurately measure urban poverty in its multiple dimensions of income poverty, inadequate access to basic services and powerlessness.\ud The assumption underpinning the limited attention that has been paid to urban poverty is that of an urban advantage. Undoubtedly, cities enjoy an edge over rural areas. Urbanisation drives the development of a whole nation. High population concentration, economies of scale, proximity and agglomeration make cities engines of growth. They offer greater avenues for livelihood and education, and should be expected to afford children better opportunities for survival, growth and development than rural areas. Better economic resources and political visibility hold a potential to offer higher incomes and enhance the scope for the government and the private sector to fund services and infrastructure. Density, favouring economies of scale, promises to favour delivering of essential services.\ud Children, adolescents and youth are attracted to city life, aspiring to access better jobs, higher education and a richer cultural life. Urban areas are also hubs of technological innovation, social exchange and mass communication. Urban children can draw from resources that are denied to rural peers.\ud The urban advantage, however, is being eroded. Provision of social services and infrastructure is failing to keep pace with growing demand being generated by urbanisation.\ud  Availability of basic services, expected to be markedly higher in urban centres as compared to remote rural areas, has been declining. Decreasing urban access to improved sources of drinking water over the past decade epitomises this trend. The traditional urban – rural social sector performance gap has been narrowing against most indicators in the areas of education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation. In some cases gaps have been actually bridged and rural areas are even outperforming urban centres.\ud 7\ud  As urban social sector performance is declining, it is likely that it is the poor, underserviced communities to remain unreached. Although statistical averages prevent any level of sub-municipal analysis, limited data available on access to basic services and health and education outcomes in low-income urban communities suggests that the urban poor may be faring even worse than their rural counterparts.\ud  Urbanisation growth is projected to continue in the future. If the present scenarios are not going to be addressed now, they are likely to deteriorate further. As density increases and unplanned settlements become more congested, investments in social facilities and infrastructure can only be expected to become costlier, both financially and socially.\ud If not properly leveraged, the potential advantage that cities offer can turn into a disadvantage. A concentration of children in areas where services and infrastructure are lacking is a major disadvantage. Children residing in overcrowded and degraded settlements characterised by poorly managed sanitation systems, inadequate provision of safe water, inefficient solid waste management are faced with one of the most life-threatening environments possible – with climate change posed to increase vulnerability further. Such a disadvantage can be daunting in a situation where the overwhelming majority of urban dwellers reside in unplanned settlements, which in Tanzania‟s primate city, Dar es Salaam, are estimated to accommodate over 80 percent of the population, one of the highest proportions in Sub-Saharan Africa.\ud Availability and access are not synonymous. In most cities, availability of basic services does not translate necessarily into access. Higher quality and availability of services needs to be equally distributed across social classes and space to achieve equal access by all citizens. The difference between successfully exploiting the urban advantage and passively reeling under the urban disadvantage can be made by the way access to resources is managed. A competent, accountable and equitable system of local governance can make that difference. Good local governance can help overcome the disparities that still bar access by the poor to safe water and sanitation, quality education, adequate health care and nutrition, affordable transport, secure land tenure and decent housing. Accountable local authorities, proactive communities and enabled children are the key actors in a local governance process leading to the creation of cities friendly to children.\ud Young people are already participating in local governance processes. They are active in children‟s municipal councils, children‟s school councils and other similar institutions. Avenues for child participation needs to be strengthened and opened to all children, not only in institutional settings, but also in families and communities having primary responsibility for children‟s well being. Cities and communities provide the most relevant scale for genuine children‟s participation, where young people can effectively engage in addressing the problems that directly affect them.\ud Though universal human rights and global development goals are set at the international and national levels, it is ultimately in a myriad of local Tanzanian communities that they are expected to be fulfilled – in the family, the school, the ward and ultimately the city. The city government offers an ideal platform for converging a plethora of sectoral interventions independently targeting children and delivering them holistically, at the local level where children live. The horizon of children is local. Within the local dimension, children‟s goals and rights can be met and monitored by duty bearers who have primary responsibility for their fulfilment. If development goals and human rights are not implemented locally, they are likely to remain abstract declarations of intent and sterile. Local authorities, communities, families and children together can transform today‟s child unfriendly urban settings into child-friendly cities – as cities friendly to children are friendly to all

An Exploration into the Perceived Effects of International Volunteering and Service on Host Communities in the Global South

Presently, we are witnessing an unprecedented expansion of Western youth participating in short-term (1 to 2 week) international volunteering and service (IVS) programs in developing countries located predominantly in the Global South (Lough, 2012; Sherraden et al., 2008). Current academic literature around the impacts IVS has on receiving host communities in developing countries is highly controversial. This study utilizes ethnographic research, involving a combination of participant -observation and semi-structured interviews, to gain the perspectives of the Fijian Highland villagers from the IVS host community, on the positive and negative effects of hosting American (aged 14-18) participating in short-term (one-week) international volunteering and immersion service programs in their village since 1996. The findings from this research suggest that IVS programs utilizing adolescent American volunteers need to distance themselves from a goal of development aid to avoid creating negative outcomes for the IVS host community, resulting in a dependency culture, unsustainable development, and reinforcement of negative Western-culture stereotypes. Conversely, if IVS programs can transition their agenda to focus on a goal of intercultural understanding, where local IVS host community members and volunteers can engage in dialogue and group reflection activities, they will ultimately generate more positive, long- term sustainable benefits for both the community and the volunteers

Implementation Challenges of the New Geography Diploma Syllabus in Tanzania: A Case Study of Korogwe and Dakawa Teachers’ Training Colleges

The study focused on implementation challenges of the new Geography Diploma Syllabus in Tanzania. The study used Korogwe and Dakawa Teachers’ Training Colleges as a case. Dakawa teachers’ training college is located in Morogoro region while Korogwe teachers’ training college is based in Korogwe district, Tanga region. The study was guided by two research objectives, namely: to investigate on implementation challenges of the New Geography Diploma Syllabus in Tanzania teacher colleges and recommend on ways to improve the implementation of the New Geography Diploma Syllabus in Tanzania teacher colleges. The study employed documentary analysis, interviews and observation as methods for data collection. The results of the study revealed that although Ministry of Education and Vocation Training (MoEVT) deemed adopting the new Geography Academic Syllabus to be the best in teacher training colleges; it has shown various implementation problems in teacher training colleges. The key problems included: poor selection of the diploma students to join the teacher training colleges, short time allocated to teach Geography academic topics, inefficient Geography teaching methods, lack of essential text books both for teachers and students, poor organization of the teaching practice and weak administration of continuous assessments. To address these gaps, MoEVT is advised to shift to the practice of training teacher

Mobile Phones, a Virtue or a Bomb for Tanzanian Secondary Students?

This study investigated the position of the use of mobile phones in secondary schools in Tanzania. It examined perceptions of secondary school teachers and students on the importance of students’ use of mobile phones as among the learning resources in classroom and the reasons associated with the prohibition of mobile phones in secondary schools in Tanzania. A total of 60 participants were engaged, 40 secondary school students and 20 secondary school teachers all from two secondary schools in Ilala municipality, Dar es Salaam region. Data were collected using open-ended questionnaires, focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and documentary review. Through inductive data analysis, it was revealed that participants had varied responses regarding the importance of students’ use of mobile phones, and the reasons associated with their prohibitions in secondary schools in Tanzania. Teachers had a view that mobile phones would facilitate self-directed learning among learners while the position of the majority of students was that mobile phones would contribute to in-depth learning in various subjects. The study concluded that the government of Tanzania should involve key stakeholders in sharing experiences in establishing mobile phones monitoring software, rules and policies regarding the suitability or faults of various decisions related to educational matters including the use of mobile phones in classroom learning

Non-Print Information Resources and The Preservation Approaches Recommendation in Tanzanian Academic Libraries

 Background: Non-print information resources are increasingly becoming more important as vital learning materials in higher learning institutions. Academic libraries therefore, have to acquire, process, organize and preserve them for current and future use. Purpose: This paper aims to assess the factors affecting the non-print information resources and their recommended preservation approaches in academic libraries.  Method: The study adopted a convergent parallel mixed approach which collects and analyses data to produce integrated findings by using both qualitative and quantitative techniques in a single study. Data was collected by means of questionnaire and in-depth interview. Result: The study revealed that dust, loss of data on disc and hard disc, loss of data due to server failure, high heat, and excessive light, fading of disc surface, high humidity, fungus on disc surface, atmospheric pollutants and virus attack were factors affecting non-print information resources. It was also revealed that highly recommended preservation approaches were good cleanliness of library where information resources are kept, educating library users on how to handle and use information resources, migrating information resources from obsolete storage media to modern storage media, technology preservation and refreshing. Conclusion: The study concludes that library staff need to adopt recommended preservation approaches to safeguard the important information in academic libraries but also system librarians in academic libraries need to be employed to assist in trouble shooting issues.  Keywords: Non-Print Information Resources; Information Resources; Information Resources Preservation; Preservation Approaches; Academic Library   Abstrak  Latar Belakang: Sumber informasi non-cetak sekarang ini menjadi semakin penting sebagai bahan pembelajaran vital di perguruan tinggi. Oleh karena itu, perpustakaan akademik harus memperoleh, memproses, mengatur, dan melestarikannya untuk penggunaan saat ini dan masa depan. Tujuan: Makalah ini bertujuan untuk menilai faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi sumber informasi non-cetak dan pendekatan pelestarian yang direkomendasikan di perpustakaan akademik. Metode: Studi ini mengadopsi pendekatan campuran paralel konvergen yang mengumpulkan dan menganalisis data untuk menghasilkan temuan yang terintegrasi dengan menggunakan teknik kualitatif dan kuantitatif dalam satu studi. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan kuesioner dan wawancara mendalam. Temuan: Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa debu, hilangnya data pada disk/hard disk, hilangnya data karena kegagalan server, panas yang tinggi, dan cahaya yang berlebihan, memudarnya permukaan disk, kelembaban tinggi, jamur pada permukaan disk, polutan atmosfer dan serangan virus adalah faktor yang mempengaruhi sumber informasi non-cetak. Diungkapkan juga bahwa pendekatan pelestarian yang sangat direkomendasikan adalah kebersihan perpustakaan tempat sumber informasi disimpan, mendidik pengguna perpustakaan tentang cara menangani dan menggunakan sumber informasi, migrasi sumber informasi dari media penyimpanan usang ke media penyimpanan modern, pelestarian teknologi dan penyegaran koleksi. Kesimpulan: Studi ini menyimpulkan bahwa staf perpustakaan perlu mengadopsi pendekatan pelestarian yang direkomendasikan untuk melindungi informasi penting di perpustakaan akademik, tetapi juga pustakawan di perpustakaan akademik perlu dioptimalkan untuk membantu memecahkan masalah yang ada.  Kata kunci: Sumber Informasi Non-Cetak; Sumber Daya Informasi; Pelestarian Sumber Daya Informasi; Pendekatan Pelestarian; Perpustakaan Akademik&nbsp

What are the impacts and cost-effectiveness of strategies to improve performance of untrained and under-trained teachers in the classroom in developing countries?

What are the impacts and cost effectiveness of strategies to improve performance of untrained and under-trained teachers in the classroom in developing countries

Factors for Effective E-learning Integration in Higher Education in Sub-Sahara Africa

This article discusses factors that contribute to effective e-learning integration in higher education in the context of Sub-Sahara Africa. It  involved retrieving articles using key words such as e-learning, perceptions, knowledge, skills, implementation, facilities, access, support, learning management system and higher education from major educational search engines. Results have revealed firstly that, first there are as many conceptions of the concept of e-learning as there are types of technologies that can support it to improve delivery of higher education. Secondly, several factors contribute to effective integration of e-learning in higher education in Sub-Sahara Africa. These include (i) institutional factors (ii) instructors and students’ factors and (iii) support factors. Based on the results, it is argued therefore that higher learning institutions must make efforts towards addressing these factors for successful integration of e-learning.Keywords: E-learning, higher education, information and communication technologies and Sub-Sahara Afric

The Education and Training of Artisans for the Informal Sector in Tanzania

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,