An African subject-specific initiative is the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) initiative, (www.tessafrica.net) which brings together teachers and teacher educators from across Africa. It offers course design guidance for teachers and teacher educators working in Sub-Saharan African countries, and has produced a range of OER in four languages to support school-based teacher education and training. These materials focus on classroom practice in the key areas of literacy, numeracy, science, social studies and the arts and life skills. In addition, members of the TESSA community are encouraged to explore, share, adapt and add their own resources for teacher education.
The TESSA initiative aims to achieve the MDGs and EFA goals and ensure that by the year 2015, every African child should have access to Primary education. In order to achieve these stated goals, Sub-Saharan African countries need four million trained teachers which cannot be achieved with the present conventional ways of teacher training. The TESSA initiative therefore stands on three pillars:
- Affordability and accessibility of ICT;
- OER philosophy which allows materials to be put on the net and accessible to all for free;
- Research studies in cognitive science which gives current information on how learning takes place.
The screenshot below provides an example of a Life Skills module, focusing on 'Planning physical growth and development sessions'.
Figure 17: Sample TESSA Life Skills Module
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