Jo Westbrook

Rethinking Teacher Preparation and Professional Development in Africa: An Analysis of the Curriculum of Teacher Education in the Teaching of Early Reading and Mathematics.

This paper reports research on the initial teacher training and continuing professional development of teachers in six African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda). The focus of the research was on the teaching of early reading and mathematics. The curriculum of both these areas was analysed in terms of (i) implementation by providers such as Colleges of Education, and (ii) impact in schools. The study found that there were many and deep gaps in the curriculum taught and consequently in teacher knowledge and skills in these two crucial subject areas. The paper sets out a series of recommendations for addressing this problem including an overall alternative approach to teacher education that emerges from the research findings as a whole.

The 1977 Universal Primary Education in Tanzania: a historical base for quantitative enquiry

This study focuses on the importance of increasing womens education as a result of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and its further impact on improving childrens educational access in Tanzania. The study uses data from the 2007 Demographic Health Survey (DHS) for empirical analysis and it is informed by the historical accounts of the UPE reform in 1977–1978. In particular, historical evidence is used to identify cohorts of women in the DHS data, some of whom were likely to be affected by this reform. Empirically, we analyse differences in educational access for children of different cohorts of women. Our results show clear intergenerational benefits that could be due to the UPE reform. But these benefits were not for the cohort of women directly affected by the 1977 UPE reform, but for women who received education a few years after the peak of the reform, once the system could cope with the massive increase in participation and the tradeoff between quality and quantity of education was ameliorated.

Teacher development: knowledge and context, by Q. Gu

This book explores the inherent difficulties and moments of enlightenment involved in cross-cultural teacher education programmes, specifically here between a UK Department for International Development (DFID) Teacher Education English Language Teaching (ELT) Programme with China aimed at introducing the communicative language technique (CLT) at tertiary level. The theme of the book focuses on knowledge transfer and the training and development of teachers with the key argument being one of the centrality of context for learning, sometimes ignored to the personal detriment of both the British teacher educators and the experienced Chinese teachers they were working with. Teachers here are seen as the key drivers for change in a globalised world which, as Gu points out, is reshaping the local. She argues for the need for a ‘globally aware but locally relevant education policy’ (p. 7) and the importance of discussion in such a project in a move towards intercultural understanding. The book is structured along the lines of a PhD thesis, with the context and methodology mostly well explained, and chapters exploring the concept of teacher identity, gaps in perception around pedagogies, the nature of teacher knowledge, and most interestingly, cultural misconceptions and stereotypes about learning and the impact of the whole of the DFID programme on the British ‘experts’. Chapters end in useful summaries and pithy new points. Gu finishes with a model of an in-service training course based on her findings. The research is expansive, including semi-structured interviews with some 38 British and Chinese respondents in the DFID programme and 33 participants and non-participants at other universities as well as some 24 universities contacted through questionnaire for comparison. This gives rigour to her findings, as does her own researcher position which crosses both cultures, constantly exposing ‘the otherness’ of each group. One point of criticism here is that we do not know in which language the interviews with the Chinese participants are conducted and therefore whether their words are in translation. There is, however, an authenticity and depth to, for example, Gu’s discussions over contrasting concepts of what it means to be a teacher and what is gained by going on in-service training programmes; for Chinese teachers of English, this is to gain deeper knowledge of English language and grammar rather than fluency and thus enhanced social status and promotion in recognition of their subject mastery, whereas in the UK learning about new pedagogies leads to greater self-respect and knowledge. Altering the shared, often routine social interactions that constitute teaching was experienced as a threat by the Chinese teachers when context was poorly understood by one group of British teacher educators and the importance of theory in Chinese practice. They failed to provide their Chinese colleagues with theory covering, for example, applied Compare Vol. 39, No. 1, January 2008, 120–122