More than 100 Tanzanian mathematics teachers have been trained under a Tanzania-Shanghai Mathematics program focusing on methodologies for teaching mathematics in secondary and primary schools. The two-week training, which ended, was undertaken by a team of Chinese mathematics teachers from Shanghai. The Shanghai team was headed by Huang Xingfeng, a professor with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Teacher Education Center (TEC). The UNESCO-TEC aims at promoting the development of teacher education worldwide, with a particular focus on supporting developing countries in Asia-Pacific and Africa to improve education quality and teacher quality. According to Huang, during the two weeks, the Shanghai mathematics teachers team collaborated with Tanzanian mathematics teachers at a school located in the Dar es Salaam University College for Education (DUCE) compounds to improve the Tanzanian teachers' professional development.
We talked and discussed how to improve mathematics teaching, Huang told Xinhua in an interview at the end of the Dar es Salaam Regional Teacher Workshop held at the DUCE compounds. He said that the training focused on supporting teachers to understand the curriculum and use of textbooks, improve teaching quality, develop teaching materials, share teaching experiences, organize examinations and provide intervention for students learning. Ding Ruoxi from UNESCO-TEC talked about a hybrid model for teacher professional development, 40 Tanzanian policymakers, mathematics teachers, and educators visited six Shanghai local schools. Especially for teachers and educators, we arranged for them to observe classroom teaching and teaching research group activities, Jacob Dibogo, a mathematics teacher at Chang'ombe Demonstration Secondary School and one of the beneficiaries of the training, said he learned a lot of things in connection to teaching mathematics during the program. I learned how to teach mathematics in a class, how to prepare a lesson, how to interact with the students and how to give students a chance to participate in acquiring mathematics content. He said the program was a result of the wonderful cooperation that exists between China and Tanzania. Chinese and Tanzanian teachers have benefited from how they teach using technology and how we teach without technology.
Coleta Kitule, a mathematics teacher at Chang'ombe Demonstration Primary School, said she has learned that pupils should be involved when preparing a mathematics lesson. Both schools are under the supervision of DUCE. Fika Mwakabungu, director of Curriculum Training at the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE), said the Tanzania-Shanghai Mathematics program traced back to 2021 when collaboration between TIE and Shanghai was initiated in facilitating Teacher's Continuous Professional Development (TCPD) programs. Under the program, TIE was responsible for collecting the needs and requirements of Tanzanian primary and secondary schools, while the UNESCO-TEC developed a mathematics educational resource system containing textbooks, learning materials, teaching videos, and lesson plans and motivated professional development for teachers in schools where the resources have been adapted to teaching practices, she said. It's my hope that the learning opportunities for our children will be improved by this facility.
