Abstract:

Tanzania has experienced growth in almost all sectors of development, especially with a considerably high growth in education, and is witnessed by the high enrolment at all levels. This growth, has presented numerous and critical challenges like limited learning space, insufficient learning materials, and inadequate human capacity to manage this growth, forcing the Tanzanian government to build more schools and train more teachers and also to call upon the private sector to invest in education at all levels in order to accommodate this growth and jointly overcome these challenges because growth in education is identified to be pivotal to growth in other sectors such as agriculture, business, health, and economy because it trains and produces professionals to steer development and changes in their areas of career profession.
To further improve the quality, value and worth of education and to address the challenges that came along with the growth and expansion in the education sector, the government of Tanzania, through its line ministry, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MoE&VT) has enacted several policies that integrates ICT in the curriculum of secondary schools to enhance the teaching and learning processes, as well as encouraging institutions to integrate ICT in their educational environments because these new technologies has gained global acceptance as tools that facilitates teaching and learning. But in reality, the implementation of these policies and use of ICT in education is inadequate and hindered by numerous factors.
This study therefore focuses on exploring the factors that contributes to the underuse and inadequate implementation of ICT in institutions of learning and in education in Tanzania. The study makes use of interviews and questionnaires to obtain data for analysis so as to generate a basis for understanding this phenomenon.
The preliminary results indicated that there are several factors that lead to the underutilization and slow integration of ICTs for teaching and learning especially in developing countries. These includes issues such as inequality of access, attitudes of users about ICT tools and equipment such as computers creates unemployment, high costs of ICT equipment and training on its use, institutional and national commitment, policies on implementation, sustainability plan, infrastructure penetration, resistance to change, background education of both the teachers and learners, and to a greater extent, institutional culture and traditions.
The researchers therefore conclude that, the integration of ICT in education is of national interest and importance, therefore there should be a national policy on its implementation and the government should layout guidelines for this process. Institution administrators should have the will and support the staff in the use of ICT for teaching and learning. High costs of ICT equipment is still a burden to the integration process and infrastructure penetration is still a challenge to the institutions located in areas where infrastructure has not reached, therefore the government should roll-out infrastructure to all areas.

Keywords:

Influences, under-utilization, ICT, ICT in education, developing countries.