Mother tongue-based bilingual education in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG), an independent state in the southwest Pacific, is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. Its roughly six million people speak over 800 distinct languages. In spite of this diversity, in 1995 the Papua New Guinean government established a mother tongue-based bilingual education programme in which community languages are taught as a subject and used for instruction in the first three?years of formal education. English is introduced as a subject in the third year of school and becomes one of the languages of instruction, with the community language, in early primary. In grades seven and eight, teachers use only English for instruction, although community languages can still be used informally. By the early 2000s, over 400 languages were being used in PNG??s formal education system. This paper describes the background to PNG??s bilingual education programme, then provides an overview of its main features and the positive outcomes as well as the problems encountered since it was initiated 15?years ago.     

The Professional Development of Teacher Educators in the Developing World: a consideration of recent developments in Papua New Guinea

This paper addresses the matter of the extent to which efforts aimed at the professional development activities of community (primary) school teacher educators in one developing country, namely, Papua New Guinea (PNG), correspond to the subjects’ own perceived professional needs. The general background is outlined first. Then the results of a study of a group of Papua‐New‐Guinea‐teacher‐educators’ perceptions of their professional needs, as accessed through semi‐structured interviews are presented in order to gain a preliminary indication of the appropriateness of recent developments aimed at the professional‐isation of teacher education in the country and to suggest some further developments which could be set in train. Finally, the importance of establishing a national association of teacher education is highlighted.     

Beyond Dependency Theory: A postcolonial analysis of educating Papua New Guinean high school students in Australian schools

This paper explores the social and educational implications of the Secondary Schools Scholarship Project (SSSP) in which Australia gave over 1,000 adolescents from Papua New Guinea three-year scholarships to study in Australian high schools. Drawing from postcolonial theory, the paper uses concepts of ambivalence, hybridity, hegemony, contradiction, and national discourse to analyse an array of issues which would not be in the purview of dependency theory. These issues include not only the cultural “border-crossings” and tensions experienced by the Papua New Guinean scholarship winners during their Australian sojourn and return to Papua New Guinea, but also the complex ambiguities in the outcomes and implications of a foreign aid project for a decolonising country. The scholarship programme illustrates the politics of foreign aid in education, including the contradictions of receiving aid from a donor country which is garnering substantial benefits from the recipient country, and the complexity of the postcolonial challenge of utilising this aid in a way that meets national educational goals in a globalising world.     

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.     

Organisational perspectives on the local management of schools: Papua New Guinean case studies

Associated with the economic adjustments of recent years, there is a trend in many countries for governments to devolve responsibility for logistical support to schools. This paper is a study of factors that can influence the local management necessary for the provision of this support. Drawing from two, largely rural, studies in Papua New Guinea (a national survey and a detailed analysis of community management of 13 schools in a single area), the paper describes the school, its Board of Management and the community as a trio of organisations with theoretically complementary objectives. It points to the inadequacy of general cultural explanations for Board inability to sustain operations over time. It claims that Board members, people in the communities they represent and teachers all have private expectations of their association with schools, which if not met, will undermine commitment. Ensuring these are met, with secondary regulatory action, can reduce the frequency of organisational troughs of apathy. As it is, in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, the prospect of expectation fulfilment associated with socio-economic advantage means that those with least to gain may refuse to become involved with education systems.     

Colonial legacies and neo‐colonial practices in Papua New Guinean higher education

This paper explores the Westernization of academic quality within the Papua New Guinea higher education system and the hybridity of the university sector where different actors force knowledge to be created for the needs of a small, formal economy, rather than for the development needs of the country. The country has yet to find a system that best responds to its educational needs; several models have been put into practice but without significant results. The approach that the PNG higher education institutes have taken, continuing the colonial tradition, builds on and is reinforced by the new international trends in higher education that follow the market needs, giving a false guarantee that HE is contributing to the economic growth of the country. Colonial legacies and neo‐colonial practices provide the conceptual framework.     

Rhetoric,Reality and the Practicum: Reconstructionism,behaviourism and primary teacher education in Papua New Guinea

Between 1986 and 1996, 14 cohorts graduating from a Papua New Guinea Teachers' College were sent out to community schools (called primary schools in Australia). They were sent out to take up the awesome burden of educating children in what has been called 'the grim reality' of the classroom in the Third World. They have had to carry the burdens of numeracy, literacy and resource development in a country that is essentially non-numerate, non-literate and without development of its huge natural resources potential. In that time, the Bougaineville conflict has put paid to assumptions that any such development would happen as a matter of course. The recent drought has further intensified the pressure on very limited resources. The findings of this study of the practicum in five primary schools in one of the provinces of Papua New Guinea suggests that the very course that the teachers have undertaken to equip them for that burden has let them down.     

Indigenous knowledge in the science curriculum: avoiding neo-colonialism

Science education in Papua New Guinea has been influenced by neo-colonial practices that have significantly contributed to the silencing of the Papua New Guinea voice. This silencing has led to the production of science curriculum documents that are irrelevant to the students for whom they are written. To avoid being caught up in neo-colonial practices, Western science educators ought to consider the notion of cultural mediators. This position, I argue, infers an obligation to take responsibility for their actions and to consider postcolonial discourses as a way of understanding the relationships and dialogue between different ways of knowing.     

COST ANALYSIS AND ITS USE IN SIMULATION OF POLICY OPTIONS: THE PAPUA NEW GUINEA EDUCATION FINANCE MODEL

The article describes the structure and operations of a computer simulation programme used in Papua New Guinea that was developed with technical assistance from UNESCO. By establishing baseline data on student enrolments, teacher posts and costs of education at different levels, the model can be used to simulate various policies under consideration and provides output on the likely effects on student flows, teacher requirements and total costs over a ten-year period. The article describes the operations of the primary school model and highlights some of the policy options that can be simulated. It is country-specific but the purpose is to inform readers of how such a programme is helping planners to improve planning and policy-making in a developing country. The author, from Papua New Guinea, worked closely with the UNESCO expert in building the model.     

INSET: prospects and practice in developing countries

Recent years have witnessed considerable growth of emphasis in the inservice education and training of educational personnel. It has come to be generally accepted that the pace of social and educational change makes preservice training an inadequate basis for long‐term professional competence, and that inservice training is an essential instrument for updating and upgrading staff. In contrast to preservice training, inservice courses can often be more easily related to the practicalities of the education profession, and several models of inservice training avoid removing staff from the workforce. Inservice practices are not usually without problems, however, many of which may be logistical and financial constraints arising from the decision to cater for trainees in their workplaces rather than in one central location.

This paper highlights some of these issues by reference to the experience of several less developed countries, and in particular by reference to practices in Papua New Guinea. For over a decade, university inservice courses have been organized in Papua New Guinea for school teachers and a variety of educational administrators. These programmes were developed independently of ‘main stream’ thinking on INSET, but analysis of their operation within a more general and contemporary theoretical context sheds useful light on issues of international interest.     

近代移民对巴布亚新几内亚发展的影响

巴布亚和新几内亚地区向具有现代意义上的生产生活方式的过渡是伴随着殖民历程的。随着地理大发现,特别是欧洲工业化的开展,探险家、商人、传教士、行政官员纷纷踏足古老的巴布亚和新几内亚大陆,殖民当局的政策在经济、政治、文化、宗教、教育、医疗卫生等多种社会层面上影响了巴布亚和新几内亚的发展,成为其进入资本主义时代的开端。     

Australian and South Pacific External Studies Association: ODLAA’s regional predecessor

The Australian and South Pacific External Studies Association (ASPESA) – the predecessor of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. (ODLAA) – was founded in 1973. From the outset, ASPESA adopted a broader‐than‐Australia focus for open and distance learning that included New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the member countries of the University of the South Pacific. Its interest was firstly on ‘professional’ matters (i.e., an identity for distance education, distance educators, and their professional development). ASPESA forums and workshops spread through various Australian ‘external studies’ institutes and developed the practical and intellectual infrastructure for ASPESA’s aims and objectives.

ASPESA acknowledged its regional and international focus in various ways. The 1981 ASPESA forum was organised jointly by the University of the South Pacific and Massey University, New Zealand, and held in Fiji. Thereafter its regional members played a larger role in ASPESA activities and regional issues appeared on forum agenda. ODLAA and its companion associations around the South Pacific received from their predecessor, ASPESA, a heritage of professionalism and participation in regional and international open and distance learning. In due course, however, differences in distance education environments led New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and then the Pacific island countries to form separate distance education associations, while maintaining links with ASPESA.     

Learning mathematics in a second language: A problem with more and less

An investigation into the development of the understanding of the relational terms more and less when used in a mathematical setting is described for two distinet groups of children. The first is a group of Papua New Guinean children attending government schools in Papua New Guinea; English isthe second language for these children. The second is a group of expatriate children attending international primary schools in Papua New Guinea. English is the first language for these children. The language of instruction in both school systems is English. In all, 376 Papua New Guinean children in grades 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10, and 255 expatriate children in grades 2, 4, and 6 were given a test in which the words more and less were used in different contexts. Although analysis of errors suggested that Papua New Guinean and expatriate children tended to make qualitatively similar errors, substantial differences were found in the grade levels by which class mastery of a given meaning could be assumed, with the Papua New Guinean children lagging from 2 to 4 years behind their expatriate contemporaties. This difference appears to have serious educational implications for the learning of elementary mathematics in Papua New Guinea.     

Relevance education,strategies for curriculum change and pilot projects: A cautionary note

Pilot projects are increasingly adopted for the generation and promotion of educational innovations. Such small-scale initiatives can be most helpful during the early stages of educational reform, but, unless sufficient care is taken in their formulation, they can contribute to the emergence of unrealistic and over-optimistic proposals for project expansion. While not opposing the movement towards pilot projects, this paper draws attention to the hazards of such means of intervention by considering their potential for ‘relevance education’ initiatives in developing countries. The argument is supported by recent empirically-grounded research carried out on the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project in Papua New Guinea.     

Supporting families: a nurturing teacher education strategy in Nauru

There has been little recent documentation concerning Pacific family support for family members locally involved in university study in their Pacific home country and how such responses affect both parties. Some studies dealing with family support for student family members, including Pacific families residing in the USA, have been published. A New Zealand Ministry of Education report on Pasifika students’ educational success rates raised the need for effective family support contexts. Another study researched the family support negotiation patterns of mature-age part-time students in Australia, Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea. Only one University of the South Pacific research focused on Pacific family and community expectations of family members studying and residing with their families in their Pacific home countries. This Nauru-based study describes mixed support responses from Nauruan families towards their teacher education student family members and Nauru Department of Education student engagement and well-being development strategies.     

Evolution Education in Papua New Guinea: trainee teachers’ views

Educated Papua New Guineans’ conceptual ecologies need to accommodate competing and conflicting traditional ethnoscientific, Western religious and modern scientific paradigms. Papua New Guinea is a constitutionally self-declared ‘Christian country’ and evolution is a controversial issue. The upper secondary school biology syllabus contains a terminating unit on evolution but the curriculum is of expatriate design and the rapid localisation of senior educational positions makes the views of indigenous teaching personnel a high research priority, particularly in the light of the current upgrading of secondary teacher training to degree level. This paper presents data arising from a study of trainee primary and secondary science teachers’ views towards evolution education. Primary science trainees were found to exhibit a poor awareness of the centrality of evolution to modern biology. For secondary science trainees, it was found that exposure to upper secondary school biology, in spite of adding little to students’ knowledge about evolution, was associated with their increasingly positive attitudes towards evolution education, as was the dual acceptance of evolution and religious belief.     

A collaborative governance approach to improving tertiary education in Papua New Guinea

Tertiary education in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is in a critical state, as the sector struggles to address increased demand for student places with severely curtailed capacity. Recent thinking about improving public services in PNG has emphasized “whole of sector” or collaborative governance. Such an approach in tertiary education has the potential to improve the sector’s outcomes within its existing resource constraints. This exploratory paper examines the challenges involved in applying a deliberate collaborative governance approach to tertiary education in PNG. In particular, two theoretical models of collaborative governance are employed to gain insight into possible issues through the consideration of four main criteria: power, incentives, history, and leadership. The paper shows that the challenges to introducing collaborative governance to PNG tertiary education are substantive, and that any effective effort will require committed leadership and a carefully measured strategy that acknowledges the country’s particular circumstances.     

Reform in the financing of higher education in Papua New Guinea

The particularities of history, culture, economy and politics of Papua New Guinea and similar Pacific island and other developing nations place strains upon the formulation and implementation of reform in the financing of higher education (and of education in general). There has been progress in reducing unit costs, with favourable implications for the rate-of-return that links higher educational costs and benefits. Funding constraints continue to elicit calls for reform of higher educational financing and for increased student contributions. Failure to communicate human capital analysis and policy implications for improving efficiency, access, and equity in higher education have hindered reform. The analysis focuses on policy implementation of reform in the financing of higher education in Papua New Guinea, and concludes in favour of a shift in financing away from institutions and toward students.     

新时期我国普法教育的回顾与思考

普法教育一直是我国法制建设及法治进程的重要部分,无论是新中国成立到改革开放的法制初成时期,还是1999年后法治国家的初创时期,它都占据了重要地位,特别是"一五"到"五五"的普法活动,更凸显了普法教育的巨大作用,这其中,既有成功的经验,也有失败的教训。总结"五五"普法教育的经验教训,对于今后的普法教育工作,特别是市场经济条件下的国家法制建设,具有重大的意义。本文拟从历史的角度,分析我国的法治建设及普法教育进程,总结五个五年普法活动的主要经验与不足之处,并对今后普法工作的发展提出一些建议。     

关于"学问"的问题

文章以谈“学问”来联系我国基础教育的现状,指出其弊之一。只注重学书本知识,忽略对学生提问能力的培养。学生脑中缺乏“？”,也就缺乏创造的种子。所以教育者要转变“学问”的旧观念意识,不仅教学生学,更重要的是要教学生首先学会问。学生有了较强的问的能力,也就创造奠定了坚实的基础,创新教育的明天才会闪烁灿烂的光芒。