The Study of Beginning Teachers’ Induction in Zanzibar Secondary schools: The case of Urban Region (Review Completed - Accepted)
The aim of the study was to document as fully as possible the programmes and practices in Zanzibar secondary schools for the induction of beginning teachers’ .Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used for an in-depth understanding of the induction programs under scrutiny. Questionnaires and interviews were the primary sources of data and documentary reviews consisted of policy documents and Zanzibar educational development plans were the secondary sources of data. In total, the study employed 110 respondents. The purposive sampling with the focus of 90 Beginning teachers in Urban areas was used. The random sampling was used in getting these respondents where by 15 schools were selected and from each school, 6 Beginning Teachers were chosen. Besides, 8 Officials from the Ministry of Education and 12 School Principals were involved. For quantitative data, SPPS soft ware was used to translate data into frequencies and percentages while content analysis was used for qualitative data .In brief, the major findings emerged are that, there is no well defined system for the orientation of Beginning teachers into the profession. As an alternative, there are some individual efforts of the very few individual school Principals who prepared their own kind of support for these Teachers as they join their schools as a measure to protect the quality of education in their schools. The underlying problem was found to be the absence of a philosophy and policy for induction by the respective Department of Teacher Education. The study concludes with several recommendations the most important being: the formulation of a policy by the Department based on a well defined philosophy for induction and implementation of programmes arising from the policy in the form of school based induction activities, external support programmes by the teachers’ centres, subject advisers, tertiary institutions and the teachers’ associations.
Keywords: Beginning Teachers, Induction, Mentoring