3 Review(s)

This book offers an insightful and critical examination of Zimbabwe's education system. The authors take a broad perspective and explore the most important aspects of the education system. The book starts by looking at the history of Zimbabwe's education system focusing on its development from an exclusionary past where a few privileged individuals could access education, and proceeds to explore the country's universal education, which followed the attainment of political independence from Great Britain in 1980. The authors then go on to examine the socio-economic and political factors that have contributed to the collapse of a once-vibrant education system that has been credited with producing, arguably, some of Africa's finest professionals. As an antidote to this, the authors discuss service delivery models that have emerged as "best and effective" practices in education and how these could transform the country's education system so that it can meet the educational, societal, professional, and economic demands of the 21st Century a timely focus for a country trying to reinvent itself as it emerges from a decade-long severe socio-economic and political crises. The authors did an excellent job of discussing how to maximise positive educational outcomes for every Zimbabwean child via early childhood education, special education, inclusive education, counsellor education and educational research. To their credit, the authors focus on fundamental educational issues pertaining to teacher preparation, emphasising structural, functional and sociological needs in response to the demands of a 21st Century economy. The book is an excellent resource for scholars, researchers, teacher preparation programs, professional development programs for in-service teachers, development studies programs, history scholars, and policy-makers, among others.