Exploring the Emergence of Community Support for School and Encouragement of Innovation for Improving Rural School Performance: Lessons Learned at Kitamburo in Tanzania

Abstract

This article describes a qualitative exploration of a primary school in a remote rural community of Tanzania, whose students showed promising performance in mathematics, as measured by the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). Case study methods were used to conduct research about the school and the community and included interviews, focus groups, and observations. This paper describes the role of community leadership in generating a learning community (Warren, 2005), that initiated community support of the school, which in turn prompted teachers’ innovations in professional development, that improved teaching and learning in mathematics and contributed to the observed promising performance on the PSLE. The article concludes that although school principals and teachers are regarded as keys in generating professional learning communities (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008), under good community leadership communities may be essential catalysts in establishing and sustaining professional learning communities which may contribute to school improvement.

Keywords

• School-community connectedness
• Tanzania
• mathematics
• learning communities
• sequential sampling