• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.151-162
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• 2020

Education is one of the priority sectors specified in Tanzania, and it has committed to provide 11 years of compulsory free basic education for all from pre-primary to lower secondary level. Despite the Government's efforts to provide free basic education to all children, there are 2.0 million (23.2 per cent) out of 8.5 million children at the primary school age of 7-13, who are out of school in Tanzania. The ICT class should be offered as a regular class in all secondary schools in Tanzania, recommended by the ministry of education. However, many schools are struggling to implement this mandate. Most of schools offer the ICT class with theory without any real hardware. Some schools were given with computers but they were not maintained for operation. There is a huge task to make ICT education universal. Main issues include: remoteness (off-grid area), lack of ICT teachers, lack of resources such as hardware, infrastructure, and lack of practical lessons or projects to be used at schools. An innovative blended ICT/STEM education program is being conducted not only for Tanzanian public and private/international schools, but also for out-of-school adolescents through institutions, NGO centers, home visits and at the E3 Empower academy center. For effective STEM education to take place and remain sustainable, more practical curriculum, and close-up teacher support need to be accompanied concurrently. Practical, project-based simple coding lessons have been developed and employed that students experience true learning. The effectiveness of the curriculum has been demonstrated in various project centers, and it showed that students are showing new interests in exploring new discovery, even though this was a totally new area for them. It has been designed for an easy replication, thus students who learned can repeat the lessons themselves to other students. The ultimate purpose of this project is to have IT education offered as universally as possible throughout the whole Tanzania. Quality education for all children is a key for better future for all. Previously it was hoped that education with discipline will improve the active learning. But now more than ever, we believe that children have the ability to learn on their own with given proper STEM education tools, guidelines and environment. This gives promising hope to all of us, including those in the developing countries.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.107-134
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of two teaching methods of word problems, one based on mathematical modeling learning(ML) and the other on traditional learning(TL). Additionally, the influence of mathematical modeling learning in word problem solving behavior, application ability of real world experiences in word problem solving and the beliefs of word problem solving will be examined. The results of this study were as follows: First, as to word problem solving behavior, there was a significant difference between the two groups. This mean that the ML was effective for word problem solving behavior. Second, all of the students in the ML group and the TL group had a strong tendency to exclude real world knowledge and sense-making when solving word problems during the pre-test. but A significant difference appeared between the two groups during post-test. classroom culture improvement efforts. Third, mathematical modeling learning(ML) was effective for improvement of traditional beliefs about word problems. Fourth, mathematical modeling learning(ML) exerted more influence on mathematically strong and average students and a positive effect to mathematically weak students. High and average-level students tended to benefit from mathematical modeling learning(ML) more than their low-level peers. This difference was caused by less involvement from low-level students in group assignments and whole-class discussions. While using the mathematical modeling learning method, elementary students were able to build various models about problem situations, justify, and elaborate models by discussions and comparisons from each other. This proves that elementary students could participate in mathematical modeling activities via word problems, it results form the use of more authentic tasks, small group activities and whole-class discussions, exclusion of teacher's direct intervention, and classroom culture improvement efforts. The conclusions drawn from the results obtained in this study are as follows: First, mathematical modeling learning(ML) can become an effective method, guiding word problem solving behavior from the direct translation approach(DTA) based on numbers and key words without understanding about problem situations to the meaningful based approach(MBA) building rich models for problem situations. Second, mathematical modeling learning(ML) will contribute attitudes considering real world situations in solving word problems. Mathematical modeling activities for word problems can help elementary students to understand relations between word problems and the real world. It will be also help them to develop the ability to look at the real world mathematically. Third, mathematical modeling learning(ML) will contribute to the development of positive beliefs for mathematics and word problem solving. Word problem teaching focused on just mathematical operations can't develop proper beliefs for mathematics and word problem solving. Mathematical modeling learning(ML) for word problems provide elementary students the opportunity to understand the real world mathematically, and it increases students' modeling abilities. Futhermore, it is a very useful method of reforming the current problems of word problem teaching and learning. Therefore, word problems in school mathematics should be replaced by more authentic ones and modeling activities should be introduced early in elementary school eduction, which would help change the perceptions about word problem teaching.