How the Network developed

The History of TESSA

Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) was started in 2005 by a team from The Open University, led by Professor Bob Moon, with funding the Allan and Nesta Ferguson Foundation, and later from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

A consortium was formed with 14 Higher Education Institutions from nine African countries, and four international organisations. Prof Jophus Anamuah-Mensah from Ghana, became the Executive Chair.

For two years, colleagues from these institutions worked together to develop a bank of resources to support both student and teacher learning. Resources were developed in English and translated into French, Kiswahili and Arabic. Colleagues formed local teams and versioned the resources for use in their own country. La Direction des Formations à Lomé in Togo joined the consortium, completed the adaptation of the resource bank into French and contributed new resources that were then adapted into English. By 2010 the TESSA website was fully operational with ten different versions of the resources, published as OER. Materials were also made available in print and on CDs, as required.

TESSA founding partners

The institutions involved in founding the TESSA consortium were:

• Egerton University, Kenya
• Kigali Insitute of Education, Rwanda
• Kyambogo University, Uganda
• Makerere University, Uganda
• National Teachers' Institute, Nigeria
• The Open University of Sudan
• The Open University of Tanzania
• The Open University, UK
• University of Cape Coast, Ghana
• University of Fort Hare, South Africa
• University of Education, Winneba, Ghana
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• University of Pretoria, South Africa
• University of South Africa
• University of Zambia

The International organisations were:

• The BBC World Service
• African Virtual University (AVU)
• The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL)
• South African Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE)

In the early years the consortium met for an annual conference. In 2010, TESSA was reconceptualised as a network, welcoming new partners and new users, as organisations take ownership of TESSA OER to support their work. We take the opportunity to meet at key events concerned with teacher education in Africa, for example the Distance Education for Teachers in Africa Conference (DETA). In 2015, for example, there were 25 presentations about or related to TESSA (link to report) at DETA in Mauritius.

Widening participation

From 2010 a series of individually funded projects worked on:

• widening participation (to include Colleges of Education, Government agencies and Civic society organisations)
• embedding TESSA in institutions (including universities, colleges and schools)
• improving access through the use of tablets, mobile phones and a redeveloped website
• developing new materials (including TESSA Secondary Science, Teaching Practice Supervisors Toolkit and Inclusive Education Toolkit).

As a result, TESSA partners are working at every level in education systems across sub-Saharan Africa, on small-scale projects (involving individual schools) and large-scale projects (involving national providers of teacher education).

Details of current partners can be found on the TESSA partners page along with the TESSA supporters whose generosity has enabled the work to continue. 

TESSA strategy (2016–2022)

As we moved into TESSA’s second decade, funding from the Ferguson Foundation (2016–20) and others, was used to ensure the sustainability of TESSA through strengthening the network, involving new partners and enabling institutions and Governments to take ownership of the OER and the ideas they contain. There were four strategic objectives for this work:

• To improve access to TESSA resources.
• To build the capacity of teacher educators through the provision of a MOOC.
• To embed TESSA in teacher education institutions in selected countries.
• To ensure sustainability through the strengthening of the network and the development of new collaborations and partnerships.

A programme of activities (including monitoring and evaluation) was developed to meet these objectives. 

The future of TESSA

The Open University has launched the Centre for the Study of Global Development, which TESSA is now part of. There has been a shift in emphasis from development work, to research and knowledge exchange. As new ideas are put forward and new funds become available, we will be looking to involve the TESSA network in activities when we can.

The TESSA OER are still relevant to the Primary school curriculum and have the potential to support a wide range of initiatives such the Competency Based Curriculum in Kenya and Teaching at the Right level in Zambia. Our aspiration is that the OER are used and adapted where necessary, to improve teaching and learning.