Internationalisation and indigenisation in Papua New Guinea’s universities: promoting authentic agency

ABSTRACT

In uncertain times for higher education learning communities, the risks of societal and epistemic dependence on a single globally dominant set of academic knowledge practices are evident. Nonetheless, many higher education institutions in developing nations struggle to achieve international presence unless they uncritically adopt these dominant practices, even where they recognise the need to use and promote local knowledge systems. We explore these dynamics in postcolonial Papua New Guinea, through an assessment of the intentions for internationalisation of the six PNG universities and barriers to agency. Our approach recognises the dialectical relationship between ‘internationalisation’ and ‘indigenisation’. We suggest that a pervasive but narrow view of indigenisation, emphasising the localisation of university staff, has hampered other forms of both indigenisation and internationalisation, producing more stasis than synthesis within PNG’s universities. Effective international agency by PNG universities, and their partners, requires more critical and continuous discourse between the international and the indigenous.     

Village Elders’ and Secondary School Students’ Explanations of Natural Phenomena in Papua New Guinea

This research investigated the sources of explanations and understanding of natural phenomena in terms of the students’ cultural and school science experiences. The first phase involved interviews with eight village elders that probed their explanations and understanding of natural phenomena. The second phase involved the design, development and administration of two questionnaires on natural phenomena to 179 students in a rural boarding high school in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Most village elders gave explanations of many of the phenomena in terms of spirits, spells, magic, religion, and personal experiences. Most school-aged students choose scientific explanations of natural phenomena in terms of what they had learned in school or from personal experiences. However, many choose explanations of the same phenomena about spirits, spells and magic that came from the village, family or home. The study revealed that students’ ideas about natural phenomena are strongly governed and controlled by their school science knowledge in the school setting. It is likely that their own traditional knowledge cannot be identified in a school setting but that questionnaires in the students’ local language be given to students in their villages (as opposed to school). In addition, so as not to diminish the value of this traditional knowledge, science education programs are needed that are able to consider and harmonise traditional knowledge with school science.     

‘Training by Papua New Guinea women,for Papua New Guinea women’: lessons from the development of a co-constructed course for women smallholder farmers

This article examines the lessons from a collaborative project that worked with women agricultural leaders in Papua New Guinea. The project sought to build the capacity of these leaders as trainers in a way that would enable the development of a sustainable community of practice and worked within a critical and place-based pedagogy underpinned by asset-based community development principles. Whilst the process of our collaborative work has a number of salutary lessons, the co-construction of the training course with PNG women farmer leaders did illustrate a particular knowledge design continuum: that is, surfacing knowledge, distilling knowledge, clarifying knowledge and then consolidating knowledge. From this consolidated knowledge, together we were able to design locally valid and locally relevant modules. As the trainers went out to trial their training, they were then engaging in sharing knowledge and reviewing that knowledge which then lead to our collective ability to improve knowledge that will enhance future training in this area.     

‘Nature’ and the ‘environment’ in Jamaica’s primary school curriculum guides

In cases where environmental education is institutionalised within schools, the curriculum can affect what and how students learn about ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’. In Jamaica, schools are considered important settings for environmental education; the curriculum therefore includes environmental issues. Using content analysis, representations of ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’ in the nation’s primary level Curriculum Guides were examined. Findings indicate that although many units emphasise an anthropocentric view of nature, this is tempered by depictions of nature’s fragility and, in some instances, nature’s ‘divine’ dimensions. Several curricular units also facilitate student’s creative engagement with nature, allowing for multiple views of the natural world.     

Between ‘enrichment’ and ‘endangerment’: ‘cultural diversity’ and the politics of belonging in the Berlin school choice discourse

Even though choice is not officially a feature in the German primary school system, some parents intervene in determining which school their child attends. Especially in urban contexts, the informal school market is growing. This demand is based on promises with respect to a certain quality of education as well as on issues that prevail in certain inner city schools. In looking at Berlin, as a global city, this article shows how contrary school choice practices gain traction in the face of ‘cultural differences’ that those practices produce discursively. Cultural semantics are activated with regard to the composition of the student body, when parents chose schools with a bilingual profile, but also when parents engage in the practice of ‘group enrolment’ into schools in inner city hotspots perceived as problematic. Our research shows how school choice practices may become acceptable despite being a public taboo, if parents argue by appeal to ‘cultural differences’.     

Assessment and student participation: ‘choice and voice’ in school principal accounts of schooling territories

Schooling territories are bounded spaces where policies, bodies, practices, and discourses meet and collide. It is well documented in assessment literature that students who are active decision-makers understand their learning processes and have the necessary wherewithal to access support across schooling spaces. These spaces are co-produced through interrelationships, where youth participation is associated with power, voice, democratic citizenship, legal entitlement, empowerment, motivation and self-confidence. Recognising the growing pedagogical emphasis on locating students as responsible for their own learning, we consider how assessment practices constitute enabling and constraining schooling territories. Assessment for learning (AfL) can be linked with emancipatory practices in schooling territories where learner agency is co-produced through socio-material classroom relations. We use principal comments to map a range of interrelated schooling territories as a relational cartography of spatialised practices and student participation in AfL. Mostly, these territories are teacher imagined and defined, constructed through schooling and policy frameworks, and determined through the use of student achievement and student voice data. These conceptualised schooling spaces are interrogated to consider the positionality of students within AfL-related territories. While choice and participation may seem emancipatory, we reveal that AfL practices can serve a rarely acknowledged process of affirming territorial power.     

‘Changing the context’: Tackling discrimination at school and in society

In this paper we propose a social psychological framework for studying the role of schools in promoting positive intercultural relations. We draw on data from schools in England where addressing issues of cultural diversity is a key aim of educational practice. We focus specifically on the role of social context in educational activities that tackle discrimination. We consider the socio-political context, local community context, and immediate school context from a social representations theory perspective. Using data from interviews with staff and focus groups with students in schools from three very different localities, we show that the socio-political context may limit schools’ ability to promote positive intercultural relations but also that it is possible for schools to promote broader change from the bottom-up, acting as agents of change at a societal level, i.e. in terms of changing the local and broader societal contexts in which they are located.     

‘Success’ and ‘Failure’ in the Education Marketplace: An Example from New Zealand

This paper details the impact of market policies in New Zealand on one low socio-economic school, raising questions about the underlyingassumptions of the programmes designed to turn around so called failing schools. The impact of macro policies on disadvantaged schoolsin the market place is documented, as is recent evidence on the impactof schools entering a spiral of decline on their examination outcomes.It is argued that school success and failure cannot be understood inisolation but needs to be placed in the wider context of stateeducational policy. Consequently, change strategies which ignore thewider policy settings risk failure.     

The Swedish ‘people’s school’ in Finland and the language question: homogenization and differentiation

This paper presents an historical overview of issues around the language of instruction and the curriculum of mother‐tongue education for the Swedish‐speaking minority in Finland during the half‐century after the establishment of the public school in 1866. In a linguistic‐ and culturally‐diverse society like that of Finland it has not been self‐evident that the question of language as a medium of instruction and as a school subject would be understood and shared in the same way by Finns and Swedes. This paper focuses on two collective themes, homogenization and differentiation. Homogenization stands for forces aiming at securing equal opportunities for education, regardless of vernacular languages and cultures. Differentiation refers to the possibility of accommodating the education to specific needs of the Swedish‐speaking population.     

Logical reasoning ability in Papua New Guinea tertiary science‐as measured by the test of logical thinking

Difficulties encountered in science study by Papua New Guinean tertiary students, although similar to those of students elsewhere, are greater. This leads to wastage of valuable third‐world resources by excessive attrition among students. An appropriate means of early identification of an individual's problem areas and a measure of the effectiveness of teaching procedures used is essential. The TOLT was shown to be an instrument appropriate for use in the third‐world situation with students who are not first language English speakers.     

‘Measuring Up’? Assessment and students with disabilities in the modern university

In this article, I ask how university students with disabilities negotiate with staff arrangements for alternative assessment practices. I draw on three case studies using a personal pronoun perspective to challenge the conventional view that educational policy and teaching practice are forms of rational action. I demonstrate how the lives of students and staff are typically characterised by unexpected events, disorder, emotion and prejudice. The analytic perspective offered here establishes how meanings, intentions and different viewpoints and alliances emerge as social actors work to create specific faculty and institution cultures. The case studies also reveal what does and what does not work – some of the obstacles – and what needs to be done if we are serious about equity and inclusive education. They include practical assistance in recognising the specific requirements of students with disabilities and how to design alternative assessment for students with specific ‘conditions’. I argue that professional development and specific techniques in curriculum design are needed. Some staff also require help in recognising their policy and legal obligations. A cultural change which identifies and challenges prejudice is a larger task if universities are to become places in which equal opportunity principles and inclusive education are present and actively practised.     

‘But this isn’t school’: exploring tensions in the intersection between school and leisure activities in classroom game design

While there are several positive outcomes from implementing game design in a formal learning context, there are also challenges that have to be considered in order to improve game-based learning. This is explored in the article, using the concepts of activity frames and stancetaking, focusing on the social organization of the game design activity. Building on video data from one 6th grade class and one 7th grade class designing computer games based on their social studies curriculum, this article shows that tensions arise when students fail to agree on what the activity they are doing is really about: The academic content and what students commonly perceive as school activities, or a game design activity informed by their leisure time. The main argument is that the students position themselves as students, game designers or characters, and that this may cause tensions in the students’ social interactions.     

Defining the ‘good mother’ and the ‘professional teacher’: parent–teacher relationships in an affluent school district

This article examines the challenges of parent–teacher relationships in an affluent school district, drawing on 30 in‐depth interviews of mothers and elementary school teachers in the USA. Professional women who have put their careers on hold to care for their children are apt to define being a good mother in terms of the academic achievement of their children. This results in extreme amounts of involvement and advocacy in their child's education, even when such actions have questionable effects on the larger school population. Enhancement of ‘good mothering’ was found to be done at the expense of teacher professionalism. A small number of entitled‐minded mothers were able to make a large impact not only on teacher job satisfaction but on the climate of the entire school due to their extensive networks, levels of advocacy, and critical examination of school processes.     

Who is to retrain the teacher trainers?: A Papua New Guinea case study

The single most important factor to improve the quality of education in a developing country appears to be increased general and professional education of teachers. Initially, it seems that this may be appropriately addressed in the teachers' colleges. However, the teacher educators themselves, often have received their own education either from the universities of developed countries or from “expert” expatriates at home. Often the result has been an adapted western curriculum being offered in the teachers' colleges, which is inappropriate to the student teachers. As a means of obtaining increased insight into a developing country's context, this study sought to gain some understanding of how Papua New Guinea teacher educators and inservice teachers negotiate their western higher education at the University of Papua New Guinea. This may provide assistance to expatriate educators to provide an educational experience that addresses student learning needs with appropriate process and content.     

Forms of school experience in France’s vocational training track students

This article examines the existing relations between the social background, the cognitive skills, the sense of schooling experience, the relation to learning and the professional project in the construction of the meaning of their course choice for French boys living in working-class families and guided to vocational studies. It presents the results of an extensive study (by questionnaire) realised in France, in eight schools of the Midi-Pyrénées region. In each school, all the students pursuing a V-level (vocational) diploma in catering, building and car industries were selected. The multivariate analysis reveals four profiles which show the diversity in the forms of compliance to the course choice and the way this compliance is supported by identitarian dynamics of very different personalisation issues. The results show the necessity to renew the models which, in the field of psychology, head towards explaining the sense of course choice to vocational studies by a process of rationalisation consisting in validating imposed course choice decision and living conditions. It is thus necessary to take more into consideration the diversity of living conditions and of training contexts that vocational students face to understand how they manage to themselves from stigmatising verdicts.     

Projecting images of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad school’: top scorers in educational large-scale assessments as reference societies

Researchers interested in the global flow of educational ideas and programmes have long been interested in the role of so-called ‘reference societies’. The article investigates how top scorers in large-scale assessments are framed as positive or negative reference societies in the education policy-making debate in German mass media and which functions they fulfil. Top scores in large-scale assessments do not automatically promote a country to the status of a positive reference society. Whether top scorers are perceived as positive or as negative reference societies depends largely on stereotyped prior perceptions that determine how success in these assessments is framed. Among the functions positive and negative reference societies fulfil are making educational reform agendas more plausible and serving as projection screens for conceptions of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ school.     

Accountability and responsibility: ‘rogue’ school leaders and the induction of new teachers in England

This paper considers the professional responsibility of schools in England to provide effective induction practices in the context of a central government mandated policy. It looks at individual schools as ‘habitats’ for induction and the role of school leaders and LEAs as facilitators or inhibitors. Notions of professional responsibility and public accountability are used to analyse the small number of ‘rogue’ school leaders who, within the new legislative framework, treat new teachers unprofessionally and waste public resources. A typology of ‘rogue’ schools that are in some way deviant in transgressing induction requirements is developed and the various sanctions that can be deployed against such schools are examined. How LEAs handle their monitoring and accountability role and manage deviant schools is considered. Finally, suggestions are made for improvements, such as the need to clarify professional responsibility and refine systems of professional accountability.