Pre-service Teachers’ Perception of the Impact of Part-time Lecturers in Tanzanian Higher Education: The Tale of Two University of Dar es Salaam Constituent Colleges of Education
Abstract
This paper reports on pre-service teachers’ perception of part-time lecturers’ teaching practices at the constituent colleges of the University Dar es Salaam. The study employed both a quantitative and qualitative research approach to enrich the data from the participants. The findings indicated that the constituent colleges of the University of Dar es Salaam have a severe shortage of lecturers and many courses depend on part-time lecturers. The findings also indicated that pre-service student teachers were dissatisfied with the practice used by part-time lectures at the Mkwawa College of Education (MUCE) of squeezing 15 weeks (a semester) of the teaching timetable into 3-4 weeks. This has negatively affected students because it has not given them enough time to revise what they have been taught; instead they have had to skim the teaching notes and hand-outs given to them during the lecture. The findings also showed that part-time lecturers are ineffective in locating extra learning materials and are rarely available for advising students on matters relating to their academic affairs. This study recommends that constituent colleges should prepare a plan that will allow part-timers to teach the courses for at least for 11 weeks of the semester to allow them to reasonably follow the normal university timetable.
Key words: part-time instructors, pre-service teachers, effectiveness of part-time instructors
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