Questioning Participation: Exploring Discourses and Practices of Community Participation in Education Reform in Tanzania

Abstract

During the past three decades, the notion of participation has become a pervasive component of educational and international development discourses (Anderson 1998; Hickey and Mohan 2005). The term’s proliferation in the policies and practices of development organizations might lead one to assume that decision-making power has shifted away from “experts” and policymakers to ordinary citizens. However, the view expressed by Rakesh Rajani, the former executive director of HakiElimu,1 a Tanzanian civil society organization dedicated to education reform, cautions against such grand assumptions. His words capture the disjunction between development as a policymaking “game” and development as a lived reality. Yet rather than becoming disillusioned by the rhetoric and the reality of participation, as an activist, Rajani suggests that it is more useful to commandeer the spaces that the global discourse of participation has provided.