Background: This paper reports on a study that analyzed the Diploma in Secondary Education (DSE) curriculum in Tanzania to establish its competency-based education (CBE) attributes. The attributes of the curriculum and whether these reflect the basic principles of CBE are critical to successful implementation at the classroom level.Methods: A Qualitative Content Analysis method was used to analyze purposively sampled DSE curriculum documents such as the curriculum of the diploma in teacher education program, Biology and Geography academic and pedagogy syllabi for the DSE etc. to establish the program's CBE attributes.
Findings:The analysis established that the DSE program is characterized by a mixture of diametrically contradictory attributes, some of which reflect traditional contentbased education and others that are more aligned with the CBE model.
Conclusion:We concluded that, by maintaining attributes of both traditional and competency-based education models, the DSE program could self-constrain its implementation at the classroom level. K E Y W O R D S competency-based education, Tanzania, teacher education curriculum 1.2 | The implementation of competency-based teacher education curricula Research on the implementation of competency-based curriculum in teacher training colleges demonstrates a disjunction between policy and practices (Hardman et al., 2012; Kafyulilo et al., 2013; Nzima, 2018). Generally, tutors have largely continued using traditional teacher-centered teaching approaches to encourage student teachers to acquire knowledge instead of developing competences. Classroom observations of tutors' lessons have established the predominance of lecturing interspersed with questions-and-answers (Hardman et al., 2012). Researchers have further observed that even in courses on methods, transmissive teaching models remain dominant, with student teachers being lectured about how to use practical work in science or group work in language learning. Structural constraints such as lack of instructional material and resources mean that student teachers heavily rely on copying notes from the chalkboard. Learning in this context has largely focused on the acquisition of subject knowledge rather than developing the competencies needed to teach subject matter (Kafyulilo et al., 2013). In addition, college assessment practices encourage rote learning through testing subject content knowledge and memory skills. Nzima (2018) has argued that the limited repertoire of tutors' instructional strategies and tutor-fronted interactions are the result of tutors' failure to translate their understandings of the competency-based curriculum and their distortion of its underlying principles. This is attributed to inadequate orientation among tutors in teacher training colleges. Since the development of competent teachers depends on the quality of the competency-based program itself, particularly its curriculum and how it is delivered (Fraser et al., 2007), studies suggest
