Dar Es Salaam — ANITHA Kihiyo, a primary school teacher at Kigurunyembe in Morogoro Region, says national curriculum set by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training for its primary and secondary schools, do not create or construct knowledge for the students.

"Curriculum should orient students to practical experience of constructing knowledge, to enable them think of positive issues instead of orienting them to acquire high marks in examinations," Ms Kihiyo explains.

She says most of the topics taught in classrooms orient students to cramming instead of constructing knowledge to the students to debate and make research and analysis of interest issues.

She further says the teacher's summary doesn't build students' skills. Instead, it makes teachers dormant, hence hindering creativity.

According to Ms Kihiyo, most teachers are not well trained to enforce changes of syllabuses. The problem leaves students with no choice but to cram. Moreover, she says changes in syllabuses do not compromise with teachers' desires.

She says congested classes weaken teaching process as the syllabuses instruct. Lack of teaching facilities is also another challenge.

Mr David Townend, a tutor at Morogoro Teachers Training College, says teachers have, in general, not developed skills in inferential thinking consistent with their age and ability.

In his presentation on whether or not classrooms are really learner-centered, Mr Townend says many students have little or no experience of using inferential thinking to construct knowledge.

He says students are oriented to rely entirely upon their teachers, instead of attempting on their own to construct knowledge. This causes some subjects, science in particular, to be considered as difficult.

"It is important to realize that while some knowledge can be constructed, it is natural to find that frustrating. However, the desire to work things out on his or her own ought to be the driving force towards constructivism," he says.

Commenting on Tanzania's education system and teaching methods, Mr Townend, a researcher from the UK, says things are totally different from what he expected to see.

He adds that his research in Tanzania has shown that many teachers begin a new topic by asking students what they already know. He adds that at the end of a lecture, a teacher asks students if they remember what he or she taught them.

"Very rarely, I came across a teacher who required students to construct their own knowledge, to think for themselves and encourage them to become independent learners," Mr Townend explains.

According to Mr Townend, syllabuses currently applied are not really learner- centered, as classrooms involved are learner-participatory rather than learnercentered.

He elaborates that his findings show that inferential comprehension was chosen as an investigative tool, because it requires students to think to obtain the answers rather than to just copy the answer from the passage.

He adds that early results seemed to show a relatively low ability to think inferentially, attributing the trend partly to the use of English as the language of the passage, which is the third language for many students.

Supporting the argument, Ms Joyce Andrew of Shinyanga Municipality's School Inspectorate Division, says within and outside schools passing examinations is in most cases considered to be a criterion for determining student's performance.

"The current teaching technique doesn't enable students to construct their knowledge. The focus is to score high marks in examinations," Ms Andrew explains.

She clarifies the current situation in the competence knowledge of students by saying the number of primary school leavers with high marks is not proportional to their reasoning capacity.

She, however, challenges private classes by some teachers who are not well monitored. She maintains that the practice is likely to weaken the quality of education, because it tunes students to depend entirely on their teachers' lectures.

Ms Andrew also says that although on one hand scoring high marks is considered the best criterion to gauge the knowledge of individual students, on the other hand it has a negative impact on teachers whose students fail their subject.

On top of that, the question of high marks has caused dismissal punishment to the teachers whose subjects scored low marks.

It also creates, sometimes, unfavourable conditions in individual student whose performance keep on dropping.