The 2024 Revised Teacher Education Programme in Tanzania: Prospects and Challenges of Sustained, School-Based, Single-Subject Teaching Practice

Abstract

Tanzania’s 2024 revision of university teacher education creates an opportunity to connect campus-based study more closely with the daily work of teaching. This conceptual policy paper analyses the revised programme’s provisions for micro-teaching and teaching-practice cycles in nearby schools. It draws on document analysis of the revised programme, Tanzanian policy and regulatory documents, relevant national and international scholarship, and the author’s professional knowledge of the revision process. The analysis identifies five potential benefits: stronger theory–practice integration, more authentic professional learning, visible development through repeated teaching, deeper school–university collaboration, and shared assessment. It also identifies constraints that may undermine implementation, especially for universities with large cohorts: limited subject-specific placement capacity, mentor workload, supervision costs, timetable conflicts, and unequal opportunities to teach. In response, the paper proposes a semester-long model in which student teachers focus on one teaching subject at a time while completing repeated cycles of planning, teaching, observation, feedback, reflection, and re-teaching. Preparation in the second subject is retained but sequenced according to programme requirements and school capacity. The paper argues that implementation should be built around capacity-mapped school networks, formal partnership agreements, prepared school-based mentors, targeted university supervision, common assessment tools, and annual review. The model is offered as a testable implementation framework, not as an empirically validated solution. Its effectiveness should therefore be established through carefully monitored pilots across different institutional and geographical settings.