Learning and teaching strategies in secondary schools in Tanzania

my free school tannzania October 04, 2014
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or thinking due to experience Kathleen, (2013)  also according to Robert’s he defines learning as relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience (2004).
Teaching is an attempt to help someone acquire or change some skills, attitude, knowledge, ideal or appreciation.
Strategy is a plan develop to achieve a particular purpose this is according to (oxford dictionary)
Or is the plan used by teacher in order his or her lesson can be understood well by their learners.
There are two types of learning and teaching strategies this is like follows participatory and less participatory methods let as start with the first
Participatory methods is the type of teaching methods which allows the individual participation during the study it involves teachers and students for example, debate, role play, project and so on while less participatory methods is the type of teaching methods which does not required anybody to participate during the study for example pure lecture methods which can be used only with the teacher the learners are the listeners.
After looking the meaning and types of teaching and learning let us now looking the learning and teaching strategies in secondary schools in Tanzania let as start with the following,
Debate as a teaching strategy is one of the teaching and technique used by a teacher where by learner takes sides on a given motion, one side should oppose and the others should propose the motion the motion should be taught by the teacher in the class. For example the coming of whites was the source of underdevelopment there must be a chair person and secretary who can run the debate, there must be the main speakers.
Advantages of debate methods,
first it create creativity among the learners
 secondly it develop skills of the oral communication among the learners
 thirdly it contains the logical organization of thoughts
 fourthly it develops self confidence among the learners
 fifth it promotes cooperation among the learners
sixth it allows one to see different point of view
seventh it develop our knowledge and opinion
 lastly but not list it helps in keeping memory of the learners for along time
Disadvantages of the debate methods
Time consuming; learners should be prepared to argue in the debate
Learners can note wrong points
It creates inferiority complex here only few peoples talks
Sometimes is very expensive to conduct due to school financial problems
Not easy to reach conclusion if judgment is not carefully competent
It can cause conflict among the students
Poor preparation can lead into misunderstanding of motion
It real depend on your opinions through hope that helps in improve language and knowledge
Some people are ignorant of others peoples interpretation/ views and can up set others
They can quickly escalate into something fierce
Some people can be offended when their point of view is challenged

Role play strategy consists of an unrehearsed dramatization in which the players attempt to make a situation clear to themselves and to the audience by playing the role of participants in the situation, its purpose is to help people see a situation through others people eyes.
Advantages of role play methods
Help us develop clear communication when we cannot put an idea about human relations into wards
It provides a group with a system of communication that is based on action rather than word symbols this helps members of the group to understand one another.
Can be a complex technique for young people to handle effectively and seriously, teachers use role play in which only two players participate to give pupils experience before they attempt to role play more complex.
It makes students enjoying through provisions of motivations
Role playing can be used as a behavioral pre-training assessment or diagnostic to assess where a leaders is in terms of skills, since the trainer can observe real behavior
Role playing also allows assessment of how well learners understands and can apply what is learned indicated in their behavior
Provides opportunity to practice in what is presumably a safe environment where mistakes have no world consequences as would be the case  in on the job practice
Role playing practice can be segmented or divided up in ways that could not be done in real on the job settings a person can practice a part of actual skills to be learned until mastery than another
Help people understand others and the position with example a person can role play a position with which they disagree, to better understand that positions.
Disadvantages of role play methods
It takes a lot of time in preparing
It used by small groups it tend to be less effective in large groups
The power of role playing is only harnessed when the role player receive expert feedback most role player receive expert feedback most role players in training session are small groups, and most feedback given by others less than competent group members
While trainers may like role plays many people who attend training actually hat them and feel uncomfortable in role situations trainers need to consider the trade of between the use of role plays and the anxiety they create
The role playing of highly emotionally charged situations tend to be less effective in large group and also tend to take the characteristics of the acting performance
Library reading assignment it is a strategy used by teacher through assignment students individually or in groups doing research in the library on a certain topic and report their findings.
Advantages of library reading assignments
Develop skills of writing and reading
It helps the students to keep memory of what they have read and discussed
It creates the imagination skills
It encourages creativity to students
It brings self confidence to the students
It helps the students to be responsible of what they have been assigned
Serves time to the students and the teacher
Promote the sense of self-reliance
Helps the teacher to acquire new knowledge.
Disadvantages of library reading assignments
Time consuming
Language problem
Lack of reference books hence poor performance
Difficult to make evaluation to an individual in a group
Poorly prepared questions may lead to misconception
Dramatization students can act as a play that is written by the some of the actors or another that is adopted from somewhere, learners study a particular situation and then play for an improved drama. A teacher could choose a particular situation and then divide a class into groups to conduct a drama.
Advantages of drama
Self-Confidence:
Taking risks in class and performing for an audience teach students to trust their
ideas and abilities. The confidence gained in drama applies to school, career, and life.

Imagination:
Making creative choices, thinking of new ideas, and interpreting familiar material in
new ways are essential to drama. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Empathy:
Acting roles from different situations, time periods, and cultures promotes compassion and
tolerance for others’ feelings and viewpoints.

Cooperation/Collaboration:
Theatre
combines the creative ideas and abilities of its participants.
This cooperative process includes discussing, negotiating, rehearsing, and performing.

Concentration:
Playing, practicing, and performing develop a sustained focus of mind, body, and
voice, which also helps in other school subjects and life.

Communication Skills:
Drama enhances verbal and nonverbal expression of ideas. It improves
voice projection, articulation of words, fluency with language, and persuasive speech. Listening and
observation skills develop by playing drama games, being an audience, rehearsing, and performing.
Problem Solving:
Students learn how to communicate the who, what, where, and why to the
audience. Improvisation fosters quick-thinking solutions, which leads to greater adaptability in life.

Fun:
Drama brings play, humor, and laughter to learning; this improves motivation and reduces stress.

Emotional Outlet:
Pretend play and drama games allow students to express a range of emotions.
Aggression and tension are released in a safe, controlled environment, reducing antisocial behaviors.

Relaxation:
Many drama activities reduce stress by releasing mental, physical, and emotional tension.

Self-Discipline:
The process of moving from ideas to actions to performances teaches the value of
practice and perseverance. Drama games and creative movement improve self-control.

Trust:
The social interaction and risk taking in drama develop trust in self, others, and the process.

Physical Fitness:
Movement in drama improves flexibility, coordination, balance, and control.

Memory:
Rehearsing and performing words, movements, and cues strengthen this skill like a muscle.

Social Awareness:
Legends, myths, poems, stories, and plays used in drama teach students about
social issues and conflicts from cultures, past and present, all over the world.

Aesthetic Appreciation:
Participating in and viewing theatre
raise appreciation for the art form.
It is important to raise a generation that understands, values, and supports theater’s place in society

It helps development of confidence of the learners
It develops interests in learners on the subject
It is well planned
Disadvantages of dramatization
It roots well planned consumes time
Only few students participate fully
It can create choose in the class if root well handless.
Silent and loud methods
This is the methods of learning where by learners are supplied with books to read or study in the class during the periods
Advantages of silent and loud methods
Encourages a learner to read and understand different authors
Reading loudly make the teacher to understand the difficulties of the learners example their spellings, pronunciations of words and soon.
Learners can learn how to group materials under pinpoint
Improve silent reading
Disadvantages of silent and loud methods
Learners fail to know the difficult words for example words, sentences etc.
Make a teacher comprehensive rather than learning
Others learners differ in ability of reading and understanding
Learners draw different conclusions from teachers
Learners require the habit of supplementary reading summary making group discussion etc.
Difficult to  evaluate individuals ability
Can led to mass understanding or confusion.
Note making is the joint method of both the teacher and his pupils in making the notes and summaries in the information taught  or in other words we can say is copying of notes which are given by the teacher at the end of the lesson either from the blackboard or through dictation.
Also it involves selecting analyzing and summarizing what you hear or read
Merits of note making
It makes pupils self-reliance
Pupils become more creative to remember more information
Pupils retain what is taught for a long time
Some skills are developed example writing skills
Pupils participate in the lesson actively –encourage cooperation
A sense of responsibility is acquired
Helps a teachers to understand the ability and ideas of learners
It serves time
It may be used to teach a large group of people
A teacher is equipped with notes.
Provides permanent records
Forces students to think because you have to make decision about to what to write
Help students to pay attention to what your reading or listening to
Helps students to remember more things
Demerits of note taking
It make pupils to memorize in coordinate material
It makes pupils to be passive and hinder creativity
It makes subject to become life less
It creates laziness to those who didn’t like to write notice. 
It hurts your arm/hand
Keep your focus off of the lecture
According to Beard R.et al she wrote that’’ one further way in which students can be helped in their note taking is to reduce the difficulty of the task by supplying an appropriate handout’’ pg 123.
Question and answers (Socratic methods) this is the methods used by the teacher in asking pupils a series of leading questions that gradually snarled them up to the point where they had to look carefully at their own ideas and to think vigorously for themselves.
According to Truax he said the follows, “Socratic discussions were in formal dialogues taking place in a natural, easy, pleasant environment” pg 232. Also he said that Socratic technique works best in a small group sessions, seminars and tutorial sessions with individual pupils.
Socratic seminars defined as” exploratory intellectual conversation centred on a text” ( cambright, 1995,p.30)
“The Socratic discussion is like building a brick wall each idea is a brick and when someone says something another person builds on top of it because of that it is never ending” pg 138 katheleen cauley.
Also" this technique has another merits in its favour when the teacher asks the questions first no one knows who is going to be asked this helps to keep the pupils alert” Leonard Clarks et al, (1976.p 221).
The aim of Socrates conservation or quiz methods sometimes called the dialect method has two stages
First the ionic or destructive phase in which by skillful questioning the pupils is brought from unconscious ignorance to conscious ignorance
Secondly the constructive phase in which by futher questioning the pupils is led from conscious ignorance to clear and rational truth
Socrates philosophy has contributed in teaching methodology in the following manners, it has given us the inductive approach, right type of questions are very helpful in leading the learners to the desired goals, also quiz technique is the outcome of the Socratic approach
Advantages of Socratic methods
It used in small group
It keeps memory to the students
It makes good relationship between the students and the teachers
It creates the confidence to the students
It improves language speaking to the students
It motivates students and help them to improve their communication kills
Disadvantages of Socratic methods
It consumes time during asking and answer each others
It is selective only few people participating
It led students panic if their not prepared
It create fear to the students by afraiding to be choose by the teachers in answer questions
According to Aggarwal, ( 2010) the following are the limitations of Socratic approach,
“It is easier for the teacher to employ the ironic part of the Socratic quiz than the constructive phase
Many teachers lack the ability to use a series of question as a method of developing an understanding of a major concept
There also the danger that the teacher in his zeal to breakdown unconscious ignorance may employ sarcasm to unwhole some extent”
Project (field study) is a natural life like learning activity involving investigation and solving problems by an individual or small group
According to truax he said that I quote “project should consist of real learning activities” pg 228.
Also Kathleen suggests that “project should challenge students to use the content in a flexible way to answer or solve problems that mirror real life this guide students performance and encourage student self assessment” pg130.
Also projects have an obvious validity in the training of a scientist they offer opportunities to study chosen topic in depth and also demand exercise of skills in every stage of the work in obtaining information defining questions or clarifying problems, setting up hypothesis ,finding or developing techniques to make an independent investigation, testing different possibilities in solving problems, synthesizing materials from various sources and writing a full report
In addition if projects are undertaken by groups of students who examine different aspects of a problem and discussion their results to gather then they foster skills in cooperation (Black et all, 1968).
Wadhwa shalini (2006,p12) suggest that students should come to a laboratory, workshop or field trip familiar with the activity they are about to perform and any relevant background the information that they will need unless this requirements is made explicit students will turn up not having read through their schedule or manual
He also said as follows, “the easiest way to ensure that students think about the practical before they arrive is to use a practical before they arrive is to use the practical exercise” pg 12.
Projects require students to demonstrate depth of understanding of major or overall unit concepts
According to katleen,(2013,p.130” project should challenge students to use the content in a flexible way to answer or solve problems that mirror real life this guide students performance and encourage student self assessment .
Advantages of project (field study)
It helps students in learning practically (doing)
It keeps memory to the students because they learns by doing
It creates professionalist and specialist (experts)
It improves working skills to the learners
It creates employments opportunities to the learners
It improves the economy through selling the products and soon.
Disadvantages of project
Time consuming
It needs a lot of preparation
It contains a lot of the coasts
It used by small groups
Study tour- is a visit to a country or an area in which you go to different places and have lecture and classes
Advantages of study tour
It expose students to other culture, it makes students to see certain issues in a new perspective  and some study tours allow students to immerse themselves in a different community even if its just a short period of time.
Oppurtinity to find new interests and enhance existing ones after travelling to many places there will be different things you will see that may not be available or done in your area or country. There a lot of opportunities for you to discover new interests or enhance existing passions
Builds friendship and enhance social skills spending time with people outside the classroom and exploring and finding new things to gather definitely allows students to have and share a common experience
It improves the relationship among the students and the areas where they visits
Disadvantages of study tour
Planning and preparation are often the biggest hurdles in setting up an educational trip and this is not always the case
Coast schools have tights budgets for bus rental, gasoline allowance, food and drink purchase and fees for trips anything beyond the schools budget will need to come from another source sometimes from educators themselves
It was selective only few students can able to manage the amount of the coast and others they remain so it is not good because others can miss the studies.
Discussion the action or process of talking about something typically in order to reach a decision or exchange ideas
This are about learning how to work better in groups and sometimes include parts of tutorials with comments on them in this way they raised a range of problems experienced in discussion by tutors and students
According to beard ruth, (1974). “the group system aims to emancipate the student from the authority dependency relationship and to help him to develop intellectual independence and maturity through interaction with peers, by glimpsing not only the context a more experienced scholars sees his problem, but the various context in which several equals see the problem’’pg 176.
Adventage of discussion
It promote confidence to the students who are too shy to address the whole group have an opportunity to contribute indirectly through a question or comment to their neighbor
The use of discussion to overcome the difficulties
Promoting understanding
Developing intellectual skills through discussion of essays, designs experimental findings
To develop critical thinking
Disadvantages of discussion methods
Time consuming during discussion every one participate in talking so this situation take a lot of time
Presence of teachers at all times for those laziness they can be bored because the presence of the teachers it led them also participating into the discussion
Easy to deviate from the topic
Can dominate by any members
This methods can not be used for teaching small children
It cannot be used to teach all topics
Lecture methods is a teaching methods where an instructor is the central focus of information transfer typically an instructor will stand before a class and present information for the students to learn sometimes they will write on a board or use an overhead projector to provide visuals for students students are expected to take notes while listening to the lecture
Advantages of lecture methods
Lecture are straight forward way to impact knowledge to students quickly
Allows larger number of the students to receive information from real experts in a subject
Instructor have a greater control over what is being taught in the classroom because they are the sole source of information
Lecture is often easier to create than other methods of instruction
Lecture is a method familiar to most teachers because it was typically the way they were tough
Because most college courses are lecture based students gain experience in this predominant instructional delivery methods
It is useful to supplement material from other source or for information difficult to obtain in other ways
Disadvantages of lecture methods
Students who are weak in note-taking skills will have trouble understanding what they should remember from lecture
Students can find lectures boring causing them to loose interest in listening
Teachers may not get a real for how much students are understanding because there is not that much opportunity for exchanges during lecture
Instructors may have to spend much time preparing for the lectures with the demonstration performance methods of instruction students participate actively

                                                CONCLUSION
to sum up the points above about how to improve problem of teaching and learning strategies in secondary school in Tanzania and globally there some of the strategies teachers can be used in order to enhance his or her teaching this is  participatory method and less participatory method for example discussion, lecture, Socratic methods, field study, project, dramatization, study tour, note making, library reading assignment, debate, and soon this methods can be used by the teachers in order to make sure their students understand the lesson.
                                                   REFFERENCE
Aggarwal J.C, et al ( 2010), Great Philosophers and Thinkers on Education, Shipra publisher, New Delhi
Beard Ruth et al, (1974 Teaching and learning in higher education, Lancashire, London.
Cauley Kathleen M . et  al( 2013) Annual editions educational Psychology, Mc grow Hill Companies, USA.
Leonard H Clarks et al,( 1976) Secondary School Teaching methods, Macmillan publisher, Usa.
Shalini Wadhwa, (2006) Aspects of Teaching and Learning in higher Education , Sarup&Sons New Delhi, India.
Winch Chrisopher et al, (1999) The Philosophy of Education, Routledge publisher,London Newyork.