Pre-Service Teacher Education at a Distance: The Case of Zimbabwe
B.R.S. Chivore

Context:
As in many countries, Zambia faced a demand for teachers that far outstripped the supply from conventional colleges. This example of a pre-service teacher education program may be useful to educators in other countries. Please note that the full text of this book is available to those with adequate computer capacity at the following URL: http://imagebank2.worldbank.org/

Source:
Chivore, B.R.S. 1992. "Pre-service Teacher Education at a Distance: The Case of Zimbabwe." In Paud Murphy and Abdelwahed Zhiri, eds. Distance Education in Anglophone Africa: Experience with Secondary Education and Teacher Training, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, pp. 103–15.

On attaining independence, virtually all the African countries, embarked on a massive expansion of educational provision at all levels. Zimbabwe is no exception. On attaining independence in 1980, Zimbabwe faced the political, economic, and social challenges that normally accompany attempts to build a new nation. In the social area, the government undertook massive and unprecedented expansion of education at both the primary and secondary levels. In 1979, Zimbabwe had 2,401 primary schools with an enrollment of 819,586 pupils. By 1989, the country had 4,504 primary schools with an enrollment of 2,274,178 pupils. At the secondary level, in 1979 there were 177 secondary schools with an enrollment of 66,215 pupils. By 1989, the country had 1,502 secondary schools with an enrollment of 695,882 pupils. As table 8.1 shows, the number of both trained and untrained teachers at the primary level has increased dramatically since independence.

Source: Ministry of Education data.

The demand for teachers outstripped the supply from the country's conventional colleges (table 8.2). In response, the government launched a number of unconventional approaches for training nongraduate teachers for both primary and secondary schools.

Output of Teachers from Conventional Colleges, 1980-83 (number of teachers)

Source: Ministry of Education data.

Although teacher education is sometimes used interchangeably with teacher training, teacher education is far more than teacher training. Teacher education includes teaching students not only to teach within the four walls of the classroom, but how to base this teaching on sound theoretical knowledge. This knowledge enables teachers to guide their pupils' learning experiences, contribute to the growth and development of people who come into contact with them, and contribute to the development of society at large. Teacher education, whether formal or nonformal, consists of programmed activities and experiences developed by an institution responsible for preparing people to work as professional teachers.

As already mentioned, the government devised new strategies to train teachers to meet the excess demand created by the expansion of educational provision. These include the following:

• The Zimbabwe Integrated National Teachers Education Course (ZINTEC),
• The four-year conventional teacher education program,
• The three-year conventional teacher education program.

ZINTEC, initiated in 1981, is the most highly acclaimed post-independence teacher education program in Zimbabwe. ZINTEC students undertake two long periods of study in one of five colleges at the beginning and end of the program, and shorter periods each year in between. When the students are not in college they are assigned to schools to teach. During this period they are helped with distance teaching materials and supervised by college lecturers. They are also supervised by school principals and education officers.

The ZINTEC program was originally based on several assumptions, including:

• Zimbabwe's conventional teacher education system could not meet the new level of demand for teachers.
• New teachers should be produced in line with the enunciated ideology of socialism. As the deputy minister of education (Herald Newspaper, April 21, 1982) put it: "We are instituting an education ideology which should be a means of transforming our society, one that will eventually dispel ignorance, fear, poverty, disease and the mental colonization under which our people have lived for nearly a century."
• The teacher and teacher education have roles to play in Zimbabwe's development process. To that end, on the job training was needed to blend theory with practice.
• Education is a basic human right. Thus, every child in Zimbabwe has a right to education. This meant that the country needed a large teaching force capable of working under difficult and trying conditions.

The decision to start the ZINTEC program and those that followed it (the three- and four-year programs) was related to the political decision to make primary education free and compulsory. The expansion of primary education meant that more professionally trained teachers were needed. The country could not use the old three-year conventional system to produce teachers because this system produced inadequate numbers of teachers. Hence ZINTEC student teachers were deployed in primary schools after their initial sixteen-week (now twenty-four-week) orientation courses and received the bulk of their training on the job through distance education.

A second justification for introducing the ZINTEC program was professional. As stated in the Handbook on Student Teaching:

More and more, in the teaching profession as well as industry, on-the-job training, with increased opportunities for the trainee to integrate the theoretical and practical learning is being seen as having long term pay-offs both for the individual trainee as well as for the profession. The argument seems to be that it is more effective to train teachers while they are at school for longer periods than was the case under the three-year conventional training (1983, p.2).

As Ncube (1983, p.48) put it:

There is a great deal of interaction during this stage between the student teacher on the one hand and the education world on the other. They (student teachers) see the problems of teaching and education as they are. Whatever solutions emerge are practical in the sense that the student teachers are constantly grappling with those problems both within and outside the school just as they would as full teacher practitioners in a normal school/community.

A third reason put forward to support the ZINTEC program relates to the cost of training teachers. The program enabled more teachers to be trained than the three-year conventional scheme without building new colleges. An evaluation (Ministry of Education 1986) concluded that the cost of training teachers under the ZINTEC program was cheaper than the three-year conventional program.

The main aims and objectives of the ZINTEC program included the following (Chivore and Masango 1982, p. 29):

• To address the shortage of primary school teachers through in-service teacher education;
• To develop a teacher education system relevant to the specific problems facing people in their everyday life;
• To develop a teacher education program guided by Zimbabwe's socialist ideology;
• To effect developmental changes through teacher education;
• To develop a professional teacher with the skills needed to provide pupils with active learning experiences, for example, the concept of education with production;
• To develop an all round primary teacher with positive attitudes and values who would promote meaningful involvement in community development.

To train as a teacher under the ZINTEC program, the entry requirements were exactly the same as those needed by any nonuniversity graduate under the conventional programs: five o-levels plus a language (now English language). Each ZINTEC college had three intakes of students per year averaging a total of roughly 800 students per intake. Thus, each year the four ZINTEC colleges enrolled a total of at least 2,400 students.

When the ZINTEC program started, it consisted of the National Center based in Harare and the colleges and their external wings. The National Center consisted of the Administration Unit, the Production Unit, and the Evaluation and Coordination Unit.

The Administration Unit consisted of the director, the senior executive officer, and an executive officer. The Administrative Unit had overall responsibility for the whole program, including liaising with the Head Office on matters relating to teacher education; liaising with regional officers on the recruitment and deployment of student teachers; liaising with the University of Zimbabwe on certification of students; initiating seminars, workshops, and vacation courses; and generally supervising ZINTEC colleges. It is this unit that was responsible for ensuring that distance education materials were distributed to students through the ZINTEC colleges.

The Evaluation and Coordination Unit was responsible for planning research and evaluating the ZINTEC program. These duties included assessing the program's aims and objectives, testing distance education modules produced by the Production Unit, coordinating assessment procedures, and assessing human and material resources. At the end of 1982 this unit was moved to the Head Office of the Ministry of Education, where it became part of the Planning Division to evaluate not only ZINTEC, but all the ministry's educational programs.

The Production Unit was responsible for writing all the distance learning materials student teachers used when they were deployed in the schools, seeing to it that they were dispatched to the regions through ZINTEC colleges, writing and modifying syllabuses, attending seminars in the regions, and testing the written materials. Currently (1990), the Production Unit writes distance teacher education modules for all nongraduate teachers' colleges.

Writing on the role of the National Center, Ncube (1983, p.46) noted:

It may be appreciated that the National Center is basically the initiator and coordinator of all ZINTEC activities in Zimbabwe. It is the watchdog of ZINTEC objectives as envisaged by the founders of this teacher education program. There is also a sense in which the National Center is representative of the new thrust in terms of educational practice and interpretation in Zimbabwe (1983, p. 46).

When the program started, it had five regional centers: Mashonaland (in Harare), Manicaland (in Mutare), Gwanda (in Gwanda), Masvingo (in Masvingo), and Midlands (in Gweru). Regional centers were responsible for supervising and monitoring students on teaching practice and in their distance education modules. Following a 1982 evaluation (Chivore and Masango 1982), the regional centers merged with ZINTEC colleges to become the external wings of the colleges.

The four colleges under the program are Morgan (in Harare), Andrew Louw (in Masvingo), Marymount (in Mutare), and Gwanda (in Gwanda). Their main functions can be divided into two main categories: those relating to the residential courses and those relating to the supervision of students deployed in schools. In 1988, however, only two colleges, Morgan and Gwanda, remained as ZINTEC colleges, but as already noted, as far as distance teacher education is concerned, all nongraduate teachers' colleges receive material from the National Distance Education Center.

As concerns the residential portions of the ZINTEC program, the colleges are responsible for the initial sixteen-week (now two terms) courses and the final two-term courses. During the initial residential courses, students are introduced to the theory of education, that is psychology, philosophy, and sociology; the history of education in Zimbabwe; and applied education. In the subjects taught in primary schools, the final residential courses are devoted to preparing and writing final examinations.

Students learn both practical teaching and the theory of education. For nongraduate secondary student teachers, the course also includes teaching subjects such as history, geography, mathematics, and science. For nongraduate primary student teachers, distance education also covers applied education subjects, including social studies, English language, and Shona. In summary, the students' major activities include the following:

• Laying the professional foundations (theory of education) through distance education using modules prepared by the Production Unit of the National Distance Education Center;
• Reinforcing the distance education through vacation courses and weekend seminars;
• Practicing teaching on a full-time basis with the same responsibilities as qualified teachers.

During teaching practice, lecturers visit students at least once each term. School principals, district education officers, and education officers also supervise the student teachers while they are on teaching practice. These officials submit reports on each student at least once a term to the students' colleges.

Like all nongraduate teachers, candidates who train under the ZINTEC program are certified by the University of Zimbabwe, which maintains standards across the country. The university's Department of Teacher Education is responsible for assessing, approving, and monitoring the syllabuses followed by ZINTEC colleges. It brings in external examiners to moderate examinations (and even sends syllabuses to external examiners for moderation).

During their first two residential terms, students are assessed through assignments and short written tests, which help determine whether or not they proceed to the second phase. Note that examinations and tests taken during the students' first year are not used as part of their final assessment.

When the students are deployed in schools, in addition to teaching practice, they write assignments marked by their college tutors. A student is supposed to be visited at least five times by college lecturers or education officers before certification.

Since the program started, pass rates have been relatively high and the dropout rate insignificant. Table 8.3 shows the pass rates for seven recent program intakes.

Source: University of Zimbabwe, Department of Teacher Education.

The percentage of those who finally qualified is higher than the figures provided. This is because the total percentages above exclude those candidates who did not complete the course with the rest of their intake. In 1989, for example, Morgan ZINTEC College held a special graduation ceremony for deferred students. The actual percentage for those who completed their course could be between 86 and 97 percent. It is interesting to note that the percentage of those who passed improved from 70.1 percent in intake 1 to 90.4 percent in intake 7. The average number of students who passed was 82.0 percent. The other important point is that there is no significant difference between ZINTEC and conventionally trained primary teachers in terms of achievement as measured by performance in examinations and overall pass rates.

Following experiences gained in the ZINTEC program, the mode of training nongraduate primary and secondary teachers changed from three to four years. As a national report (1984, p. 17) observed:

The success of ZINTEC revealed by the evaluation exercise resulted in the "Zintecisation" of teacher training colleges. In place of the 3 years conventional training program, a four year course comprising first year residential, second year on-the-job, third year residential and fourth year on-the-job has been instituted.

However, as already noted, in 1988 the training of nongraduate teachers in conventional colleges reverted to three years. Student teachers spent their first and third years at college and their second year in the schools as full-time teachers receiving their tuition through distance education modules from the National Center for Distance Education.

Since the ZINTEC program started, the Ministry of Education, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and other interested parties have carried out several evaluations. Whenever the ZINTEC program was evaluated, conventional teacher education programs were also evaluated.

ZINTEC underwent major evaluations in 1982 and 1986. The following were some of the main reasons why the ZINTEC program was evaluated (Chivore and Masango 1982):

• To determine the degree to which ZINTEC was attaining its purposes, aims, and objectives;
• To provide evidence on the value of the ZINTEC program necessary to those, both internal and external, providing funding;
• To provide data on the program and on teacher education needed for general educational planning (covering, for example, teacher supply and demand, college staffing, admission procedures, and the dual system of teacher education);
• To collect data essential for the continued ongoing improvement of the program;
• To have a critical but objective analysis of the main problems encountered and recommendations on how to handle them, beneficial not only to ZINTEC, but to education in general and teacher education in particular;
• To determine the impact and effectiveness of ZINTEC student supervision;
• To assess the cost-effectiveness of this type of teacher education.

Only those findings with a bearing on distance education are discussed. These include ZINTEC's organization, staffing, student supervision, and the effectiveness of distance education.

ZINTEC ORGANIZATION. As already noted, following the 1982 evaluation, the Evaluation and Coordination Unit was moved to the Planning Division of the Ministry of Education. Chivore and Masango (1982, p.37), the report's authors, recommended that "the Evaluation Unit should become part of the Head Office, Planning Division but should continue monitoring such projects as the ZINTEC program as well as other innovations that may be launched."

When the ZINTEC program started, its regional centers and colleges were separate entities. The 1982 evaluation recommended that the colleges and regional centers should be administratively and physically united to facilitate closer coordination and cooperation between field- and college-based lecturers, and efficient use of facilities such as distance education modules and libraries.

STAFFING. The average lecturer-student ratio at the colleges was 1:40 in 1982, while the field lecturer-student ratio was 1:60. This staff shortage had adverse implications for the lecturers, whose workloads became very heavy in terms of visiting students, marking distance education assignments, supervising both theoretical and practical work, and holding vacation seminars. The staff shortage was not confined to ZINTEC colleges, but was also apparent in conventional colleges, which by 1982 had introduced distance education as part of their mode of training.

The quality and relevance of education in a developing country such as Zimbabwe depends on the quality and relevance of the teacher. Both evaluations established that the vast majority of ZINTEC lecturers, as well as those in conventional colleges, were university graduates, some with higher degrees, trained to teach at the secondary level. Those lecturers teaching at the primary level were not trained to teach at that level. Those teaching at secondary teachers' colleges were not trained in teacher education, let alone distance teacher education. Hence the evaluations recommended refresher courses in the form of workshops. Some candidates were sent abroad to take short courses in distance education.

STUDENT SUPERVISION. Field supervision of student teachers by lecturers formed one of the most important activities in the training of teachers through distance education. The 1982 evaluation in particular indicated that 80 percent of the student teachers were visited once per term, 8 percent were visited twice, while 12 percent had not been visited at the time of the evaluation. This is an inadequate number of visits, but was representative of what was taking place in the program as a whole at the time.

Submissions made to the Evaluations and Coordination Unit by a field lecturer voiced concern about the inadequacy of visits. One college wrote: "It is impossible to visit students regularly because of tutor-student ratios." Another college requested "more staff to facilitate for more visits to students and more face-to-face interventions with students." At the same time, 96 percent of the students who took part in the 1982 evaluation stated that field supervision by field lecturers was inadequate. The student teachers rated this as the most crucial problem. The 1986 evaluation also highlighted the inadequacy of field supervision.

The 1986 evaluation analyzed the quality of the supervision carried out. It reported that lecturers spent more time checking schemes of work, lesson plans, and records rather than helping students reinforce concepts and skills and link theory with practice. This was partly due to the lack of funds, vehicles, and staff.

EFFECTIVENESS OF DISTANCE EDUCATION. The Evaluation Unit pre-tested modules produced by the Production Unit to assess their content, relevance, and comprehensiveness. One simple method used to determine if students understood the modules was to ask them to underline words and concepts in the modules that they did not understand. Students were also asked to define or explain certain terms such as hypothesis or telegraphic utterances. As the 1982 (p.103) report notes: "In their written assignments, the majority of students failed to explain terms using their own words." Thus, it became clear that some of the modules were beyond the students' comprehension. Thus, the report recommended that the Production Unit produce simpler modules that reflected the student teachers' academic level.

As part of their continuous assessment, both ZINTEC and conventional students write assignments and projects as directed in their modules. The evaluations established that there were problems in the marking of these assignments. Lecturers were not up-to-date with the marking and were slow to return students' distance education assignments. This developed into a vicious cycle as students became demotivated and started to submit their assignments late. The end result was that students wrote and submitted assignments without the necessary feedback vital for their professional and academic growth. As the 1986 (p. 6) report observed: "The delay meant that students did not benefit from the tutors' comments since they (students) wrote the next assignment before receiving the first, second and sometimes third assignment." Other reasons why student teachers were late in submitting their assignments were a lack of reference materials at their schools of deployment, inability to carry out research, heavy work load (s ince they were also full-time teachers), and poor postal services in some areas.

EFFECTIVENESS OF ZINTEC-TRAINED TEACHERS. Teachers' effectiveness can be rated on their skills at lesson planning, using teaching and learning aids, classroom management, class management, language and communication, education with production, education and the community, extramural activities, pupil evaluation, and record keeping. The 1982 evaluation found that the majority of student teachers were effective at extramural activities, language and communication, teaching and learning aids, class management, record keeping, and classroom management. They were relatively ineffective at lesson planning, class evaluation, education with production, and education and the community. The reasons for this relative ineffectiveness included confusion between aims and objectives; some principals who told student teachers to follow the lesson and planning formats of their schools, with the result that student teachers could not put into practice what they were taught at college; and some colleges that did not equip th eir students with proper planning guidelines. In the 1986 evaluation, however, and in other subsequent studies (Chivore 1985, 1986a, 1989b) planning was not among the weaknesses of the ZINTEC students.

The 1982 and 1986 evaluations of teacher effectiveness were carried out among student teachers. It is common knowledge that the fine efforts made when candidates are student teachers often evaporate once these same candidates become qualified teachers. Hence the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of professionally trained teachers (though admittedly distance education alone was not the only approach used to train these teachers).

Chivore (1989a), along with fourteen experienced educators, carried out a pilot study on the effectiveness of teachers trained since independence in the Harare region. The study analyzed teacher effectiveness in several areas, including class management. This included lesson introduction, lesson development, teacher-pupil interaction, questioning techniques, class control, pupil participation, and the amount of written work given. In five of the seven items-lesson introduction, teacher-pupil interaction, questioning techniques, class control, and amount of work given-ZINTEC-trained teachers were rated as the most effective. The pilot study observed that:

In order of strength, as far as class management was concerned, based on the type of training received, the position was as follows: ZINTEC, four-year conventional and finally three-year conventional (Chivore 1989a, p. 20).

Even though this pilot study focused only on the Harare region, it is heartening to note that in terms of effectiveness, training on the job using distance education seems to be an effective method of training pre-service, nongraduate teachers.

During both the 1982 and 1986 evaluations, student teachers were asked to write down problems they encountered during their training, particularly during the deployment period. The problems mentioned by these students were basically similar to those already discussed. They included the following:

• Inadequate supervision by the lecturers;
• Lack of feedback on assignments and projects to students from lecturers;
• Lack of books during deployment;
• Poor postal services in some areas that hindered communication between colleges and students;
• Relatively heavy teaching loads, which resulted in some student teachers failing to strike a proper balance between their duties as student teachers and their duties as full-time teachers.

Other studies have confirmed most of the above problems (Chivore 1986a, 1986b). The government has attempted to minimize most of these problems by implementing recommendations made in the evaluations.

It is not possible here to cover all the contributions distance education has made in training nongraduate teachers in Zimbabwe. Despite the problems noted above, the ZINTEC program has had tremendous achievements, including implications for the cost-effectiveness of teacher training and in improved output of trained teachers. The result is that distance education has become a permanent feature of Zimbabwe's system of teacher education.

The 1986 ZINTEC evaluation concluded:

From the information collected by the evaluation team, it was established that the ZINTEC program was cost-effective. It was found to be more cost-effective than what used to be the conventional Teacher Education program. Furthermore the ZINTEC program produced more teachers than the conventional program.

Between 1980 and 1988, a total of 17,455 primary teachers completed their training in Zimbabwe (table 8.4).

Source: University of Zimbabwe, Department of Teacher Education.

Note that the figure of 17,455 trained teachers includes only those candidates who completed their training at colleges that received associate status from the University of Zimbabwe. The figure excludes referred and deferred candidates, most of whom completed their training. Consequently, the final figure should be higher.

Note also the increase in the number of trained teachers from 1983 on. This is due to the teacher output from ZINTEC colleges.

Almost every country in southern Africa emphasizes the need for universal primary education. However, one of the impediments that militates against universal primary education is the lack of trained teachers. Another problem seems to be too much experimentation in the training of teachers. During the past ten years, Zimbabwe has had three types of pre-service teacher training. These different patterns meant that the country has not developed a single system of teacher education based on well thought out plans and evaluations. Worse still, the ZINTEC program, which according to pilot studies (Chivore 1989a) is producing competent teachers, is apparently being systematically phased out even though the shortage of professionally trained teachers persists. Distance education is one way to solve the problem of too few trained teachers in southern Africa, especially for newly independent countries such as Namiba.[sic]

Since attaining its independence, Zimbabwe has invested heavily in education. In the process of that investment, the government has introduced various types of teacher education programs. Prominent among them was the ZINTEC program, which brought with it distance education as a mode of training pre-service, nongraduate teachers. This innovation affected all forms of pre-service, nongraduate teacher education, in that for the first time in the country's history distance education played a prominent role in teacher education. What is now urgently required is a systematic and thorough impact evaluation of teachers trained since independence to assess their effectiveness. This is crucial because if money is spent producing incompetent, inefficient, and ineffective educators it is money wasted.

Chivore, B. R. S. 1985. "Recruitment and Training of Non-Graduate Secondary Teachers in Zimbabwe Since Independence." Ph.D. thesis, University of London, Institute of Education. Unpublished.

Chivore, B. R. S. 1986a. "Teacher Education in Post-Independent Zimbabwe: Problems and Possible Solutions." Journal of Education for Teaching 12:3.

Chivore, B. R. S. 1986b. "Teacher Education in Zimbabwe: New Strategies, Problems, and Possible Solutions." In B. W. Treffgarne, ed., Education in Zimbabwe. Occasional Papers. 9. London: University of London, Institute of Education, Department of International and Comparative Education.

Chivore, B. R. S. 1989a. An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Primary Teachers Trained Since Zimbabwe Attained Independence. Unpublished.

Chivore, B. R. S. 1989b. "Zimbabwe's Experiences in the Evaluation of Distance Education Programmes." In M. Simonson and S. Zvacek, eds., Proceedings of Distance Education. Seminar papers. Iowa: University of Iowa.

Chivore, B. R. S., and R. B. Masango. 1982. An Interim Assessment Report on the Effectiveness of the ZINTEC Programme and Implications for Teacher Education in Zimbabwe. Harare, Zimbabwe: Ministry of Education and Culture, ZINTEC National Centre.

Ministry of Education, Planning Division. 1986. An Evaluation of the Impact of the ZINTEC Programme-A Summary Report. Harare, Zimbabwe.

Ncube, A. M. 1983. "The Zimbabwe Integrated National Teacher Education Course (ZINTEC)." In U. Bude and J. Greenland, eds., In-Service Education and Training of Primary School Teachers in Anglophone Africa. Baden Baden, Switzerland: Nomos Verlagergeseschaft.