Pre-primary School Teachers ' Perspectives on the Characteristics and Quality of Materials for Teaching Literacy and Numeracy in Tanzania Preschools
Abstract
Characteristics and quality of teaching and learning materials facilitating early literacy and numeracy skills acquisition has had hardly attracted focused research in Tanzania. Yet it is recognised that the success young children ' s learning is engendered by their access to high quality materials, which are essential for active learning and serve as a prerequisite for successful teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy in early childhood settings. It is against this backdrop that this study was conducted by involving four experienced female teachers as key informants to share their rich experiences in establishing characteristics and quality of literacy and numeracy materials. These key informants engaged through face-to face semi-structured interviews were purposively sampled using homogenous sampling. Although quality in education is not a cross-border concept, quality materials for teaching and learning literacy and numeracy skills should generally be safe, clean, age-appropriate, engaging for the learners, complete and meaningful, locally available, and culturally sensitive. Therefore, Early Childhood Practitioners (ECP), education planners and decision- makers should ensure that materials are properly selected, are readily available, accessible and utilised for the best results in learning to be attained.
Keywords: Quality, Literacy, Numeracy, Active Learning, Materials.
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