The politics of teachers' work in the context of curriculum resources marketisation policy reforms in three secondary schools in Tanzania : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at Massey University, Manawatu Campus, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Abstract

Before Tanzania enjoyed the fruits of postcolonial education policy reforms, the country was hit by the world economic crises in the 1970s. Consequently, Tanzania and other developing countries turned to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that imposed, financed, and controlled her education and economic policy through the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) of the 1980s. Thus, Tanzania adopted education privatisation and marketisation policies during the 1990s. More specifically, in 1991, the Policy on Production and Distribution of School and College Books, which I will call Marketisation Policy, redefined school and college curriculum resources according to market principles. The purpose of this study was to critically analyse how marketisation policy reforms, reconstructed at societal, institutional, and local classroom levels, reshaped teachers’ subjectivities and practices between 1992 and 2012. Using an ethnographic case study of three secondary schools from northern Tanzania, the study examines teachers’ work histories, politics, and cultures using a combination of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1995, 2015) and the theory of pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 1971, 1975, 1990, 1996, 1999, 2000). The study aimed to answer three research questions, namely: (1) What policy texts and discourses were constructed in the process of marketisation policy interpretation in secondary schools? (2) How do marketisation policy texts and discourses reshape secondary school teachers’ subject positions and pedagogical codes? and (3) How do the subject positions and pedagogical codes constructed by marketisation policy texts and discourses reshape teachers’ pedagogic practices and official knowledge construction? Marketisation policy implementation and professional documents, interview and focus group transcripts, and classroom observation notes were collected from the three schools. These were analysed to discern themes that characterised the nature, history, and politics of teachers’ work practices. Findings indicate that marketisation policy texts and discourses positioned secondary school teachers as passive and dependent consumers of marketised curriculum resources (MCR) produced by private publishers and the state. They were also positioned as lacking knowledge to plan, decide, and implement curricula, pedagogic, and evaluation practices. These subject positions constrained teacher creativity and critical thinking, and reproduced capitalist publishers and state power and ideologies through the policy texts and discourses. Curricular, pedagogical, and evaluatative cultural practices were dominated and influenced by capitalist publishers and the state through marketisation policy texts and the discourses of finance, MCR, educational materials’ approval, and advertising. The study documents how marketisation policy aims, objectives, outcomes, and pedagogic strategies reflected the aims and effects of both colonial and postcolonial education policy. Teachers and students constructed multiple power/knowledge and resistance to dominant discourses based on accessible MCR, private tuition, past educational training, collaboration with colleagues, and attending some training. However, although these discourses empowered them to construct and exercise power/knowledge to respond to marketisation policy discursive constraints, they also reconstructed curriculum domination because of students’ limited access to MCR and classroom curriculum discourses.