Technology-Supported Teacher Professional Development in Tanzania

What is MEWAKA?

 MEWAKA is a national, government-led initiative launched in 2022 to transform primary education across Tanzania. The name is an acronym from the Swahili: Mafunzo Endelevu kwa Walimu Kazini, which translates roughly as: Continuous Professional Development for In-service Teachers. The programme targeted all 200,000 primary teachers in Tanzania, who are based at around 20,000 schools.

 MEWAKA involves weekly, school-level Communities of Learning (CoLs), as well as cluster meetings between different schools; these are group sessions where teachers collaborate to discuss different challenges in their practice and develop their teaching skills and subject knowledge. CoLs are supported by a set of content modules, developed by the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE). Rather than taking a traditional, top-down approach to teacher education, the model requires school leadership teams and peer facilitators to select CoL discussion topics themselves, and choose modules that address the teachers’ learning needs.

 To support this model, TIE created a digital Learning Management System (LMS), essentially an online learning platform, which hosts the modules, self-study materials, and other learning resources. All teachers can in principle access the LMS and can therefore access the MEWAKA resources any time, anywhere. To further support this, the government also repurposed and distributed a stock of tablet computers to all primary teachers.

 These features make MEWAKA a valuable case study in how digital technology can enable flexible, peer-led teacher professional development in low- and middle-income country environments where TCPD has historically been top-down, infrequent, overly theoretical and located at centralised training centres.

The research: Technology-supported TCPD in Tanzania

Between October 2021 and March 2026, an international team of academics and government officials, acting as co-researchers, evaluated and refined the roll-out of MEWAKA. The study spanned two phases and investigated the model’s effectiveness, whether it was sufficiently responsive to the needs and challenges of different teacher groups (such as teachers with disabilities) and the success factors and challenges involved in reaching all teachers when implementing the programme at scale.

To do this, the team undertook two complementary research phases:

1. Design-Based Implementation Research: The research involved iterative cycles of designing, testing and refining tools and strategies, aiming to both understand and improve implementation and scaling. It included strengthening the capacity of government officials and the education system. Conducted across eight rural primary schools in Tanzania’s Lindi region, the research examined different approaches to supporting teacher professional development. The team provided teachers with downloadable PDFs, internet data bundles, and Raspberry Pi handheld computers pre-loaded with the learning materials, to understand how to optimise access to the LMS in different situations. Fortnightly CoL observations, supplemented by classroom observations, surveys, interviews and focus group discussions revealed how the programme was being implemented and responded to in practice.
2. Qualitative, mixed-methods research: Across 12 rural primary schools in four regions (Lindi, Dodoma, Mwanza and Iringa), this part of the project examined equitable access and inclusion for teachers, as well as how the LMS was being used. The team carried out classroom and CoL observations, surveys, participatory focus groups and interviews in two rounds of data collection with teachers, school leaders, programme coordinators and education officers.

Find out more

More information about the research questions, study design and methodology, published research tools in English and Swahili, along with a full timeline illustrating the project’s progress, is available on the EdTech Hub website.

Successes: Communities of learning and remote peer collaboration networks

 In principle, MEWAKA exhibited strong potential as a model for TCPD. After participating in the weekly CoLs, teachers reported developing a wider variety of teaching aids, greater confidence, stronger peer interactions and the adoption of more participatory, student-centred approaches to teaching – although this last point was not always confirmed by the researchers’ classroom observations.

Attendance at CoLs was often very high, and teachers showed a growing commitment to the programme as it developed. This was directly linked, in their view, to improvements in professional knowledge and stronger student engagement (see Section 4 on motivation).

Instead of just relying on the weekly sessions, teachers actively started to use smartphones and digital platforms – particularly WhatsApp – for self-study and peer support. “I rely on my phone to Google meanings and access learning videos,” one teacher told the research team. “MEWAKA has supported me in tackling difficult challenges, particularly with syllabus interpretation”. WhatsApp groups were used to seek advice on challenging topics, share lesson plans, and maintain professional connections across wards, in some cases connecting hundreds of educators in a single network.

Given the reach of mobile technology in Tanzania – where there are approximately 20.5 million smartphones in use nationwide – these findings suggest that there is considerable scope to use digital platforms for both semi-structured and informal learning. Founding this on a structured LMS potentially provides a highly scalable framework for TCPD.

Barriers and challenges

Despite this overall promise, a number of operational and policy-related barriers restricted the use of the LMS.

Fundamentally, many schools and teachers were still unaware that the LMS existed. System analytics also revealed low levels of platform use: over a six-month period, fewer than 10,000 (5%) of the country’s 200,000 primary teachers logged into the LMS, and just 26% of those who did reported accessing it weekly or more.

The main reasons for this were difficulties with access and connectivity. Unreliable electricity and weak rural network coverage limited teachers’ ability to get online, while high mobile internet costs created a further disincentive. As one professional development team member put it: “Teachers are ready and motivated for the Communities of Learning, but there is no power, and no network for them to explore the online materials until they travel to town, which is expensive.”

Equipment access and maintenance presented additional policy hurdles. Although the government distributed tablet computers to support the roll-out, the 11.2% of teachers recruited after 2022 lacked devices to access the LMS, and limited support or budgeting for hardware maintenance also meant that devices could not be replaced when they failed.

Low levels of digital literacy, especially among female teachers, posed a further challenge. “Some teachers, purely through lack of experience, did not know how to do basic things like open a file, edit it and save it,” Hennessy said. “To ask them to go online, access the LMS, navigate to the right materials, download and use them, is too much of an ask when they lack this basic know-how”. 

 

Solutions

To overcome these barriers and improve access as MEWAKA expands, the researchers highlighted several practical, actionable solutions, some of which are already being adopted (see Section 6).

While providing data bundles did improve teachers’ access to the modules, ideally, access to the LMS should be on a no-cost basis, which would require the government to secure zero-rated data agreements with mobile network providers (so far only one agreement is in place). Offline learning options should also be considered: for example, in the school where pre-loaded Raspberry Pi computers were trialled (with induction), no access issues were reported. Other low-tech options, such as downloadable PDF versions of the modules, should also be explored. Even though this would mean that videos would not be accessible and usage data would not be centralised for monitoring purposes by the government, teachers having something to support their learning is probably better than nothing.

Other key recommendations included establishing digitally confident teachers as school-level “tech champions” (building on the effectiveness of peer support seen across the MEWAKA programme), and offering digital skills workshops, especially for female teachers. The researchers also recommended routine reporting of LMS analytics, and the creation of clear feedback loops between schools and local, regional and national levels of government, to resolve resource gaps and other context-specific challenges promptly.

Addressing an evidence shortage

In general, evidence about how to equitably involve disabled teachers and those with chronic illnesses in TCPD is in short supply, especially for low- and middle-income countries. To help address this, the qualitative, mixed-methods part of the project examined the success factors and barriers affecting the participation of disabled teachers and those with chronic illnesses. Data were drawn from a combination of focus group discussions, small-group interviews with teachers, discussions with TCPD leadership teams, and interviews with officials at all levels.

 

A patchwork of local support

At school level, efforts to support teachers with disabilities were commonplace but rarely systematic and usually involved assistance from other teachers. For example, non-disabled teachers often read materials from the programme aloud, or acted as scribes, for their visually impaired peers; signed or facilitated lip-reading for those with hearing impairments and made ad-hoc accessibility adjustments for those with limited mobility.

While these efforts can make a significant difference to of the participation of teachers with disabilities in CoLs, support that depends on the goodwill of colleagues is, the researchers note, inherently informal, inconsistent and disempowering. Rather than relying on charity, they argue that adaptations should be more structured and, ideally, led by disabled teachers themselves. Two CoLs that were observed for the study, for example, featured disabled facilitators whose leadership proved invaluable in establishing effective participation arrangements.

Stigmatisation and practical challenges

At a fundamental level, disabled teachers and those with chronic illnesses were wary of stigmatisation, negative labelling and exclusion from professional development opportunities. One hearing-impaired teacher, for example, described how after he had asked a colleague to repeat what a trainer had said, the external trainer had assumed that “this guy doesn’t listen”. In several cases, teachers with disabilities and chronic illnesses expressed their gratitude to the researchers for being included in the research itself, precisely because inclusion in other exercises is rare.

For those with chronic illnesses, a bigger issue was having to miss sessions due to fatigue or sickness. The research highlighted that MEWAKA lacked any form of catch-up mechanism to compensate for this. Those with physical disabilities also often struggled to travel to off-site TCPD sessions.

Another major issue was digital accessibility. The LMS was launched without accessible features: for example, speech software was not included with the government-issued tablets, and although braille versions of modules were planned at the beginning, these plans were abandoned once the government decided to distribute the tablets. Because teachers did not generally know how to install free accessibility tools such as screen readers onto these devices, disabled teachers again found themselves reliant on informal peer support.

These teachers nevertheless displayed a high level of commitment to the CoLs and “contributed significantly and meaningfully to all substantive aspects of the CoL sessions,” the researchers reported. To maximise their participation, what they describe as “patchy” ad hoc provision needs to be replaced with structured guidance and support mechanisms. At present, as the National MEWAKA coordinator confirmed: “Support for teachers with disabilities or gender-related issues has been somewhat overlooked or not given sufficient emphasis.”

 

Solutions

The research highlights the need for accessible resources – like assistive technologies, the inclusion of alt text with images, and speech output software – to be incorporated into TCPD programmes like MEWAKA, rather than treated as an afterthought.

To ensure that this happens, the research team recommended involving disabled teachers directly in programme design and collecting disaggregated data to tailor courses to their needs. At a more practical level, the research recommended scheduling CoLs during the school day – so that disabled teachers and those with chronic illnesses as well as those with caring responsibilities can attend – and recording sessions so that absent teachers can catch up later.

Finally, the researchers recommended creating dedicated support networks where teachers with disabilities can meet regularly to share their experiences and develop ideas and strategies that encourage more inclusive TCPD.

The challenge

In some parts of the world, participating in TCPD is tied to promotion and career advancement. This is less possible in low- and middle-income countries, meaning that other motivators need to be sought. The research explored this question of incentivisation in the eight rural primary schools where the design-based research was conducted. The team investigated how both intrinsic (cognitive and psychological) and extrinsic (material and reward-based) incentives influenced teacher engagement.

It became clear that motivation could not be assumed. Although all teachers were expected to participate in the CoLs, average attendance during the first cycle was 88% per week and dropped to 69% in some schools. One reason for this was scheduling: sessions ran after hours without compensation, or during lunch breaks. Many teachers in Tanzania, however, supplement their salaries with additional employment after school, and travel home for lunch. Schools lacked a budget to provide any form of refreshments. Some schools found creative ways to provide these, but lack of official provision was a bone of contention for teachers and other stakeholders interviewed.

 

Drivers of motivation

During the second research cycle, there was a marked upswing in engagement. Strikingly, the proportion of teachers requesting more time for CoLs, or more frequent meetings, rose, from 16% to 44%.

While school leaders attributed this to teachers becoming more familiar with the programme, the researchers also saw evidence of intrinsic motivation. Teachers reported seeing tangible classroom results following the CoLs. They valued having the agency to select study topics, benefited from being able to solve problems with peers, and felt that using the technology that had been integrated into the programme was also improving their digital literacy. The introduction of structured, digital modules was considered by 77% of teachers to make sessions far more relevant and engaging than unguided discussions. An education officer explained: “As teachers meet in CoLs and share various teaching and learning strategies and knowledge, their teaching competence has increased, leading to greater self-confidence.”

The study also explored formal recognition by trialling two types of certificate: a certificate of completion for those who attended the sessions consistently, and a peer-evaluated achievement certificate for teachers who contributed strong ideas and strategies during COLs.

The findings tentatively suggest that completion certificates were motivating, because, as an education officer noted: “Teachers… see that the national headquarters in the capital has recognised them.” The achievement certificates proved more contentious, however, as teachers were uncomfortable with the idea of reviewing, or being reviewed by, their peers, and were concerned about personal biases creeping into this process.

Implications and recommendations

Overall, these findings show that intrinsic motivators can make a considerable difference in settings where reward-based incentives for participating in TCPD are less available. Echoing wider research on this subject, however, officials pointed out that intrinsic motivators only work if teachers’ basic needs are being met. In Tanzania, many teachers are low-paid or live far from school, for example – and if these wider, structural and socio-economic problems are not addressed, tactical interventions designed to encourage them to participate fully in TCPD may not succeed.

The research team made several practical recommendations. These included further use of certificates of completion or recognition of formal leadership roles such as becoming a CoL facilitator, and possibly linking these to promotion. This is currently being implemented by the government. Basic though it may seem, the research also highlighted the need to attend to issues such as scheduling the CoLs during school hours — particularly pertinent for female teachers with caring responsibilities, disabled teachers and those with chronic illnesses — and allocating budgets for session refreshments.

If these issues can be addressed, the study’s findings suggest that MEWAKA – as a decentralised, flexible programme that intends to promote school- and teacher-level agency – provides a strong basis for motivating good levels of participation in TCPD.

Embedding government partners in the research

Integrating technology into national education policy reforms in resource-constrained countries like Tanzania can involve a range of actors, including researchers, government officials, and implementation staff. Potentially, all have different institutional experiences and priorities – and the more these diverge, the more research findings may fail to inform policy.

To address this potential gap, government officials were embedded directly into the Technology-Supported Teacher Professional Development research project. Officials from the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE) worked alongside academics. Together, they iteratively tested interventions such as offline and mobile data-free options for LMS access, and different types of certificate as a means of motivating staff (see section 4).

Government officials were also co-researchers for the Phase 2 mixed-methods study in 12 schools, participating in data collection and facilitating activities, workshops and interviews. Importantly, the collaboration extended far beyond central government through local administrative tiers. Other government departments, especially MoEST and the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG, now the Prime Minister’s Office, PMO-RALG) also supported the research and took part in interviews and stakeholder workshops throughout. Findings and recommendations were presented to the most senior leaders in the government (Minister, Permanent Secretary, Deputies) who were keen to take them forward. 

Lessons from the approach

An evaluation of this integrated approach showed that co-designing research with government partners gave the prospective policy beneficiaries immediate ownership and naturally created pathways for evidence to feed back into TCPD policy planning. The principle of researching through iteratively refined research cycles enabled the team to adapt to rapid changes which are common during the development of EdTech policy. For example, when the government decided to distribute tablet computers to primary teachers, the cyclical approach ensured that the research project adapted and remained relevant.

More broadly, education research is often used to hold governments accountable for education, and governments may, therefore, treat it with caution. The collaborative design broke down those barriers. This relied in particular on laying out an explicit, shared commitment among the partners at the start to constructive, joint problem-solving and improved implementation. Officials also co-led public dissemination of the findings, ensuring that reporting, too, remained collaborative rather than adversarial.

The mechanics of this collaboration evolved over time. An initial attempt to involve all institutional partners equally in every activity proved difficult because of their competing workloads, priorities and different organisational cultures. The team therefore pivoted to a model of strategic contribution, recognising that a single, timely insight from a Ministry official, for example, could prove just as valuable as extended fieldwork by academic researchers. Managing this balance required extremely thorough project leadership and stakeholder coordination.

The success of this approach – and specifically the uptake of evidence at a policy level (see next section) - hinges on early and ongoing alignment between partners. End-of-cycle reviews offered natural checkpoints for the partners to come together, review evidence and jointly determine next steps. This ongoing alignment, coupled with early goal-setting, helped manage the expectations of the government partners. As the research team point out, this is crucial, given that governments typically tend to use large-scale, quantitative research and may need to be acquainted in advance with the more nuanced insights that qualitative approaches tend to offer.

Outcomes, implications and recommendations

In general, the research highlighted the value of involving government representatives as co-researchers at all project stages. As one senior government official commented: “The partnership has strengthened the evidence for teacher development in our country, promoting digital learning solutions and supporting data-based decision-making”. The benefits were bidirectional, however: academic researchers also became more familiar with various government protocols and processes that will support their capacity to undertake further public sector research.

Success relies on a foundational commitment to equitable collaboration and to exploring the theory – as well as the context-specific practice – of how to bridge the research-policy gap. In this project, the team constantly documented not just what was working, but how things worked and why, producing evidence that could inform future collaborations.

As the team concluded in their analysis, embedding research within government systems, navigating the political economy of evidence uptake, and anticipating technological shifts are essential for national reforms: “For governments and implementers… more in-depth involvement in implementation research can shift perceptions of research from critical external evaluations to collective problem-solving, supporting more meaningful evidence use.”

Impacts on policy and practice

 The collaborative approach is already driving a number of positive changes. For example:

• The government has produced new guidance for school leaders to support the delivery of Community of Learning sessions in their schools.
• A publicity drive has been launched to build awareness of the LMS.
• To address internet data costs, TIE negotiated a zero-tariff arrangement with Vodacom to allow free LMS access for teachers, and similar arrangements with other mobile network providers are also being explored.
• Steps are being taken to provide certificates of participation in MEWAKA CoLs to all participants and link this, potentially, to further leadership and promotion opportunities; the Tanzania Teacher Professional Board has presented draft guidelines to MOEST.
• The findings on disabilities prompted various school leaders and education officials, as well as the Tanzania Teachers’ Union, to approach the government to demand better support for disabled teachers and those with chronic illnesses. In response, TIE’s Special Needs Unit is developing accessible large-print and braille TCPD materials. This has been described by co-researcher Dr Fika Mwakabungu (Director of Teacher Education, TIE) as “an encouraging step towards inclusive education”.

MEWAKA is also now being expanded to secondary schools. An LMS for secondary level is currently being rolled out. The Agency for the Development of Educational Management – the executive agency responsible for enhancing education management through training, research and consulting, will be using findings from the research to support the implementation.

Wider reach and future research

The findings from this project have the potential to inform TCPD not just in Tanzania, but other low- and middle-income countries as well. The research design and outputs are already informing other EdTech Hub initiatives and other programmes, such as a further study testing school-level offline access to the LMS through the Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa and the Play Matters project (led by the International Rescue Committee).

Several questions for future research have been raised by this project. For example, further investigation is needed into the potential of blended models for in-service teacher education, the most effective ways to sustain scaled TCPD, and the potential role of AI in TCPD.

Despite some of the challenges and obstacles that the research identified, Hennessy describes herself as “cautiously optimistic” about MEWAKA’s capacity to improve TCPD in Tanzania in the long term.

“It is possible to go quite far towards addressing some of the problems we identified – which are intrinsic to the environment – if you set your mind to it,” she said. “The government are not running away from these problems. They have seen them for themselves and understood them through their involvement in this research project. Strengthening technology-driven teacher professional development in Tanzania will require sustained effort and joined-up thinking, but we have certainly laid a basis for doing exactly that.”