The development of the Institute of Adult Education, Dar-es-Salaam 1960-1985 : policies, structure and performance

It is the researcher's conviction that organizations are created to serve specific goals. They acquire legal mandate for performing functions that would lead to those goals, hence justification for commanding both human and material resources. However, organizational survival depends on the manner in which they effectively utilize resources to create a congruence between stated goals and their actual operations. It was envisaged that the IAE's (i) over 25 years experience as an innovation in adult education warranted measurable impact to assess its effectiveness; (ii) its operations could shed light on the dynamics of Adult Education organizations in the Third World context and (iii) assessing the totality of the IAE's functions, could shed light on what are its merits and weaknesses. The researcher constructed a framework of analysis : the PSP (Policies, Structures, Performances), based on educational and organizational theories. Through interviews, analysis of documents, questionnaires and participant observations he explores internal and external factors that have influenced the establishment of the IAE; assesses the extent to which the IAE has met its changing goals and explores the complexity of its structures, as well as its performances and the motivation orientation of persons who have been engaged in its life. The findings indicate that prior to the founding of the IAE (i) secular ideas about education as a change agent had concentrated on the school; (ii) that eventually forms of adult education gained prominence, developed and co-exist with the IAE to date and (iii) that although IAE was established to serve an extramural function, it has become a broad AE provider in line with national aspirations. Either by its involvement in various experimental programmes:training, mass education; or by decree. Contextual variables have favoured the IAE, enabling it to command great resources (especially as regards manpower). Increased expansion in size and importation of technology (expertise and infrastructural facilities) have led to complexity, and centralization of authority. Increasingly its services are being reduced, yet it has the manpower capacity to do more. The researcher argues that, IAE needs to review its goals.