Assessment of career development in public organizations: a case of teachers in public secondary schools in Ilala municipality Dar es Salaam

This study investigated career development programmes for teachers in public secondary schools in Tanzania: A case of public secondary schools in Ilala municipality. Specifically, the study assessed teacher’s awareness of career development programmes within his/her place of work, investigated whether there was career development programmes for teachers in their ministry and identified obstacles hindering teacher’s the opportunity to participate in career development programmes. The study was conducted in Dar es Salaam region. The study employed qualitative research design. Five public secondary schools were sampled and total of 51 respondents were involved in the study. Data were collected through documentary review, semi structured interview and questionnaire. Data obtained were analyzed through two levels. First, subjected into SPSS for descriptive statistics generation, which was later subjected to content analysis. The findings revealed that majority of teachers understand career development and few were aware of formal arranged career development practices within their schools. It was found that, coaching, mentoring and/or peer observation, Observation visits to other schools, Educational seminars or conferences, Courses or Workshops and qualification programmes were the CDPs employed by MoEVT. Alongside, the results showed that majority of teachers did not participate in any of the programmes and those participated mostly were for short-period and the programmes had moderate, small or no impact in their development as teachers. Only few teachers received salary supplement after training. Moreover, majority of teachers indicated to have strong need in almost all of the identified career development needs. Nevertheless, three common problems hindering teachers the opportunity for career development were identified; lack of employer support, nepotism in work places, and expensiveness of career development programmes. It was concluded that career development for secondary school teachers was ineffective so the government need to check this situation. It was recommended from the study findings that teacher career development stake holders need to improve the support mechanisms and sensitize teachers to see a strong value of learning and advancing their career. For effective and beneficial teacher career development educational planners and school administrators should investigate the real career development needs of teachers and the strategic plans at all levels should incorporate teacher career development and budgeted for. Also, the government must develop clear policies and adopt strategies that support career development initiatives