- What is the aim of your visit to the UT?
Osaki: 'We have a project that is called Teacher Education Assistant in Mathematics and Sciences that is supported by the Nuffic. We are developing it in collaboration with the UT and the Free University of Amsterdam. Part of our staff is being trained here, we are creating material to be tried in the classrooms and we are also trying to implement a master's programme in the area for our own university. For those reasons we came here to exchange experiences with our Dutch colleagues.'
- Is the knowledge you gain here applicable to the Tanzanian reality?
Chonjo: 'Yes, because the participants in the project are aware of the situation in our country. It's not that they come here and just transport theories to Tanzania. What we do is to combine what we get in the Netherlands with our reality by doing fieldwork in our own country.'
- After your stay at the UT, what is your impression of it?
Chonjo: 'Well, it's very different from our university, a different environment, different people, and different styles of working: we, people, are different. Here, they have more resources and also the population of the university is larger. Besides, the approach is more an engineering approach; you have a problem, you try to find a solution and see if it works. In Tanzania, apart from this, we also have people researching matters that may not have a direct application.'
Osaki: 'I think also that our concerns have more to do with people, with what happens in a classroom and in the community.'
Funja Osaki (right) and Peter Chonjo.
