Gennes Hendry Shirima

2 Publications in AERD

Author Publications

Rural-Based Primary School Teachers’ Inculcated Servant Leadership Skills and their Enhanced Capacity of Addressing Rural Education Challenges through Edu-Heroes Initiative in Tanzania

By Ibrahim Yunus Rashid

This article reports the findings of a qualitative tracer study that was conducted for teachers in 13 rural-based primary schools in Tanzania. These teachers had benefited from a leadership training dubbed “Edu-heroes Initiative.” The project had been designed to enhance rural primary school teachers’ capacity to address rural education challenges through servant leadership. The tracing aimed to document their improvements evident in the actions they took in their respective rural schools, which were considered as primary units of analysis. The initiative had six phases–planning for training, participants’ selection, initial face-to-face training, participants’ deployment, and online post-trainings for a year, continuous data collection, and data analysis and report writing. Through thematic analysis, the tracer results show that the leadership trainings offered the necessary servant leadership skills to rural-based primary school teachers, who demonstrated enhanced capacity in finding local solutions to rural education challenges soon after their deployment. They engaged and created constructive connections with their students and other stakeholders in the pursuit of lasting solutions to the problems facing rural education. The article, therefore, recommends for scaling up of such continuous professional development to empower all rural-based teachers, with their innovative ideas deserving special attention and support from educational leaders and local communities for relevant and sustainable schools’ improvement. © 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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A paradigm shift in guiding the operations of open schools in Tanzania: Praxis of emerging controversies and dynamics

By Gennes Hendry Shirima

This paper reports the findings of a study that had examined the operations of open schools for out-of-secondary-school youth and adults in Tanzania. Its objective was to establish the practicality of the policy guidelines in guiding the operations of open schools and the emerging controversies and dynamics in their daily operations. This qualitative study collected data using documentary review and interviews, which was later subjected to thematic analysis. The study found contradictory and incongruous policy guidelines for open schools that largely rendered them impractical. Moreover, misinterpretations, varying understandings and inconsistencies in practices among open schools were common occurrences. There also emerged several dynamics in guiding the operations of open schools such as un-standardised practices, erratic registrations and persistence of uncontrolled open schools in the black market. In consequence, it was difficult to rationally manage their practices. Overall, the rather misplaced policy priority governing the operations of open schools calls for a special attention and impetus to bring about the desired positive change in this education sub-sector. © The Author(s) 2022.

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