Why has the language of instruction policy in Tanzania been so ambivalent over the last forty years? : "a study eliciting views from government policy-makers, international donors to Tanzania, university academics and researchers, and the general public"

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Since the 1960’s the need to put in place a language of instruction policy that favours the use of national language (Kiswahili) as a medium of instruction throughout education system in Tanzania has been considered significant. Several government guidelines, circulars and policy statements have been repeatedly produced in this regard, but with little hope! This study presents views and opinions from educational stakeholders in Tanzania as to why there has been such ambivalence in the language of instruction policy, especially at post-primary levels of education. Different views and opinions were elicited from twenty research participants, who were in four major categories: government policy-makers (GPM), university academics and researchers (UAR), international donors to Tanzania (IDT) and the general public (GP). Females and males, one each made 50% of all research participants. Face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, documentation analysis and library survey were the main methods used in data collection. Phenomenological strategy within the qualitative approach was employed to guide the process of data analysis and interpretation on the one hand, and argumentation and discussion of research findings on the other. The study also used Qualification Analysis (QA), Linguistic Human Rights (LHRs) and Education for Self-Reliance (ESR) as the major theories which basically served as a guide. To achieve the major purpose of the study, the following main research question was used: ‘Why has Tanzanian government been so ambivalent to the use of Kiswahili as the language of instruction in post-primary education despite the fact that Kiswahili is spoken by almost 99% of Tanzanians compared with English, which is a foreign language spoken by hardly 5% of the population?’ According to the data analysis and interpretation (section 5.3) and the whole corpus of discussion of major themes and research findings (section 5.4), the study shows that there are a number of reasons and facts which, over the last forty years, have attributed to the ambivalence of the language-in-education policy in Tanzania, particularly in secondary schools and higher learning institutions.