Arts Education and Pedagogy in the Learning Profile in Tanzania: Current Trends

Abstract

The debates in developmental theory have focused on the potential of arts education in the context of transforming education in the twenty-first century. Aspects of education in art and education through art (Bamford, IFACCA, UNESCO, and Australia Council for the Arts, The Wow Factor: Global research compendium on the impact of the arts in education, 2009, 21) are undergoing critical assessment as tools for enabling young people to utilize personal expressions and emerge with their own creations in a more innovative way. The challenge remains, at the pedagogical level, how to integrate cultural expressions into the formal school-learning environment, and thus, enable young people to gain access to the knowledge and skills embedded in the traditional arts in a way that improves their lives.

This chapter presents results of a research project that investigated how understanding the relationships between culture, employment and education can help Tanzania’s young people to secure jobs, survive in the creative workforce and have a prosperous future. The study employed a mixed-methods approach. The findings were that there must be deliberate steps to integrate cultural expressions into arts education—education in arts and education through art as a tool for nurturing young people’s creative talents for their future sustainable employment in Tanzania (Ruyembe, Practical linkages between cultural policy and education policy in promoting a creative workforce for youth in Tanzania, 2015).

Focusing on arts education and the education policy, the chapter also discusses the prevailing situation and argues that in the Tanzanian education system, there are no well-articulated pedagogical ways to utilize fully traditional cultural knowledge and skills for youth to foster creativity, critical thinking and intellectual development (Delors, Learning: The treasure within, 1998; UNESCO, Education for all global monitoring report: Youth and skills putting education to work, 2012). Finally, this chapter offers recommendations to respond to this situation. Although this discussion is specific to Tanzania, the case may also apply to other developing countries.