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ABSTRACT
Globally, efforts to increase access to pre-primary education have led to a surge in enrolment. To address a pre-primary teacher shortage that resulted from a dramatic increase in pre-primary enrolment rates, Tanzania developed a new pre-primary diploma programme with the goal of attracting more teachers and improving instructional quality. In this article, I investigate the commitment trajectories of 20 pre-primary teachers who were part of the first cohort to graduate with a pre-primary diploma but had not yet received a government teaching post. Analysis of in-depth interviews reveals both stability and change in teachers’ pre- and post-graduation levels of commitment. I contend that making sense of stability and change in the context of unemployment requires an understanding of the employment landscape in Tanzania, the constraints on students’ ability to influence their educational and career trajectories, and the government’s efforts to professionalise ECE teaching.
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks to the pre-primary teachers who made time to share their stories and to Dr Alyssa Morley, Dr Fortidas Bakuza, Dorothy Mrema, and Laurent Manyono for their valuable contributions at different phases of this project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Role of funding source
The funding did not play any role in study design, data collection/analysis, or the decision to submit the article for publication.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. I documented more goals/plans than the total number of teachers whose commitment remained stable because some of these teachers described multiple goals.