ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the evolution of Aga Khan Foundation (AKF's) school improvement programs from the early 1980s to 2000 and places the East African programs in the wider context of similar activities that AKF has sponsored over the same period in South and Central Asia. AKF's first school improvement program started at the Aga Khan Mzizima Secondary School in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1984. It focused on training teachers in their own school and involving them in developing locally relevant curriculum materials. AKF soon came to see that the Resource Center's emphasis on individual teachers had the effect of ignoring ‘whole-school’ development, and indeed often had the negative effect of discouraging collaboration among teachers and among schools. A comparative analysis of the programs in Kisumu and Bombay was published by Harry Black of the Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE) in 1993. The SCRE report commends the programs for trying to effect a shift from teachercentered to child-centered methods.
