Wondering what faculty member Tim Keiper is doing in Tanzania? Follow online on his blog

Western Washington University Associate Professor of Secondary Education Tim Keiper is currently in Tanzania with his family on a Fulbright scholarship. In Tanzania, Keiper is working in the teacher- preparation program at Mt. Meru University in Arusha.

While there, Keiper plans to conduct research in remote areas of Tanzania related to the preparation needs of teachers working with orphaned and vulnerable children. His research title is “Assessing the Needs of Pre-Service teachers Preparing to Educate Orphaned and Vulnerable Children in Rural Tanzania.”

Follow along with Keiper on his East African Schools blog. An excerpt:

Each day the students here have seven classes as called for by the official Kenyan curriculum: English, Kiswahili, Math, Social Studies, Science (for the upper levels), and Islamic Religious Education. All students in Kenya are required to have religious education and can choose between Islam and Christianity. Here in Dadaab they only offer Islamic education. The region is basically 100% Islamic but if there was a person of a different religion they would still study Islam. Obviously there is no separation of church and state in Kenya as the local sheikh comes to the school to teach the class. All subjects have intense high stakes tests on each subject at the end of Standard 7 (basically grade 7). In Kenya if a student does not pass this test he is required to take the year over (in Tanzania she can take the test over). According to my initial data gathering, around 10% go on to secondary school (in TZ, the last published census reports it at 6%). Test scores is one factor for discontinuance but there are many factors that cause vulnerability – HIV/AIDS, orphanhood, poverty, nomadic lifestyle, trauma, family/community values to name a few.