Teachers' conceptualizations and practices of inclusion

The expansion of primary and secondary schooling in Tanzania during the past decade has had numerous positive benefits for Tanzanian children and communities. Through initiatives like the Primary and Secondary Education Programmes (PEDP and SEDP), which have been discussed in previous chapters, enrollment rates have risen and government-sponsored “ward schools” now provide more opportunities for secondary schooling. At the secondary level alone, the participation rate has increased from a net enrollment ratio of 5.9 percent in 2004 to 27.8 percent in 2009 (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training [MOEVT] 2010b)

Gendered aspects of classroom practice

The previous chapter introduced the concept of inclusive education as broader than the provision of “special education” for youth with disabilities to mean education for all youth who, by virtue of belonging to a particular racial, class, ability, or gender group, have traditionally been excluded or marginalized in a country’s education system. In this chapter, we focus on gender relations in secondary education, and particularly on girls’ experiences in the schools in this study. Although girls in Tanzania currently constitute a slight majority in Standards 1–7, this situation changes significantly in secondary and tertiary education: by the end of Form 4, girls make up 46 percent of the student body; by the end of Form 6, 39 percent; and at the undergraduate level they are only 36 percent (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training [MOEVT] 2010a). Thus, in our exploration of inclusive education in this volume, both disability and gender warrant attention

Equity, power, and capabilities: constructions of gender in a Tanzanian secondary school

This article aims to move beyond issues of access to schooling for girls to investigate the constructions of gender through a macro-level analysis of policy and micro-level analysis of practice at a secondary school in Tanzania. State-sanctioned school texts are examined, as well as classroom discourse and teachers’ understandings of gender, to show how both “gender as equity” and “gender as power relations” perspectives interact in schools. While there have been advances in the recognition of gender as a structuring force within schools and society, this article contends that the capabilities approach adds value to these views by considering how gendered texts and discourses may still be limiting the capabilities of female and male students in Tanzanian secondary schools

International collaboration

International collaborations are becoming more common in the field of education, and throughout the academy, as the ease of travel and communication have made it easier to work across national boundaries. In addition, many academic institutions are seeking to internationalize their campuses through expanded study abroad offerings and additional incentives for faculty to develop research programs beyond national borders. The same time-space compression characteristic of globalization in other fields greatly affects higher education, as universities are becoming multinational institutions with campuses in two or more countries and faculty and students engaged in cross-border instruction and knowledge production. Finally, some scholars are committed to efforts to better integrate local expertise and knowledge as they attempt to decolonize or, at a minimum, democratize forms of social research. However, those who have engaged in research that brings together scholars and practitioners from multiple countries are well aware of the obstacles and tensions that frequently emerge as myriad differences in access to resources, demands on faculty time, and discursive conventions become apparent