I presented a paper entitled "Culturally Inclusive Educational Multimedia" at the FIER Conference on 6 January, 2004. Notes on other papers below

FIER Conference Notes

selected notes from the Fiji Institue of Educational Research Conference, 5-8 January, 2004. USP SSED, Fiji

Alumita Taganesia

Keynote address "Culture and Society: bridging the gap of education and society", by Permananent Secretary of Education, Fiji, 6 January 2004

• "education is a force for creating the future"
• "Find alternative pathways"

Current Fiji Demographics

• population 2002 824,000
• 212,693 im fulltime school
• 1505 schools

Strategic Goals, MOE Priorities

• strengthening vernacular lang
• civic pride/ values
  • customs
  • environment
  • multi-culturalism
• life long/ inclusive educvation

Q and A

• Q: IT development enhances gap, while neglected books, radio, more accesible media
• A: "we must still develop IT policies, and be mindful of negative affect of overexposure to IT. Fiji has best school radio broadcast unit in pacific"

D. Chand, APTI

6 January, 2004

• problems of globalisation, "do we have a chance to escape?"

M. Senikarawa, Parallel Sessions

Fijian Education: from a Fijian perspective, presented 6 January, 2004

Affirmative Action

• fijians lag behind indofijians

• disparity is increasing

  • 1970, 122 more indofijians passed NXUB than fijians
  • 1987 709 more indofijians passed NXUB than fijians

• 25% of companies are owned by Fijians

• computer jobs are the sector with the highest percentage of fijian employment (37%)

• get ref for Williams 2000

L. Seru,

Cultural Gap in teacher-student interactions in multicultural schools, 6 January, 2004

Language

• "compulsory English creates learning gap"
• "fear of speaking because of english level"
• language affects learning, tasks

Local Context

• must integrate traditional learning
• most teachers in multicultural schools overlook local culture, skills, and background

K. Arya,

The role of school management committees, 6 January, 2004

History of Education in Fiji

• "education as evangelism" for Fijians but not for indofijians
• for indofijians, indians don't need education b/c they are useful in fields -William A. Scott
• "forget what the missionaries brought, forget what the colonists did, what do we do?"
• teaching must be contextual

S. Sumeshwar,

DFL in School Broadcast Programme, 6 January, 2004

Radio

• Teachers World, Radio Fiji One, 10:35 - 10:45, T/R

• in service training of teachers

• one for primary school teachers, one for secondary school teachers

• Video tapes provided for teachers in many categories

• fiji school system has not taken advantage of USP work (USPNet, DFL, etc)

P. Puamau

in panel at FIER, 6 January 2004

Sprituality in Education

• "I love god so much... he is the solution to all the issues and challenges that face Fijian education and society in general"
• "Fiji can be a canan to its people"
• "people in all walks of life must turn back to god; there is no other way... and Fiji will indeed be a blessed nation"

Talanoa Sessions, 6 January

W. Ali,

Cross-cultural education

• at Lautoka Teacher's college
• has a cross cutlural education course

L. Seru

"western concepts will not work to discipline fijian students"

A. Sharma

''"I think sometimes we are lost in 'my culture, my religion'" go for Univeral values

Ana Taufeulungaki

Director of IOE, Keynote Address, 7 January, 2004: Learning to live together with all of our differences''

• get her paper!

Beliefs about knowledge

In Pacific

• "passive knowledge valued over active construction"
• contextual rather than abstract
• learn by oberservation, imitation, memorization
• "and all these things we are told are bad... no wonder our children are doing poorly in the western school system"

Knowledge

in West, is

• analytic
• numerate
• linguistic
• factual
• problem-solving

in Pacific, is

• part of life
• relationships
• knowledge is interrelated and connected
• imagination, creativity
• collective vision

Language

• "different languages create different world views"

• learning must be based on vernacular and children's prior knowledge

• language determines concepts

• language is an instrument of culture

• when we ask our children to learn a new language we are asking them to learn a new world view

• excluding, marginalising first language anniliates culture

• the development of the mother tongue is critical

• Tongan students do better in Maths when taught in Tongan (get ref)

• "If you use your first language as the medium of instruction you will have learning much more relevant to the student. If you don't do this, you will lose it."

• Bigg's Framework

• provide as much visual materials as possible, model concepts

Colonialism of Donors

• "how much freedom do we have to set our research agenda when research is payed for elsewhere"
• Wadon Norsey: funding doesn't necessarily raise performance of schools

Panel: Decolonizing our mind

FIER Conference Panel, Decolonizing our mind: rationale, challenges and coping strategies, 7 January, 2004

U. Baba, J. Veramu, G. Sami

Language

• "consider running more workshops in vernacular... more vernacular publications" -J. Veramu
• "everyone must learn Fijian language so we can have same wavelength" -G. Sami

Colonisation (U. Baba)

• "the enemy is as much within as without"
• "colonisers come to the pacific and write what they think they see"
• media dominates culture
• "we need everyone's voice to write about our culture"
• "the best researcher is an insider"
• "research outcomes must be accountable to our people... make research available" to those we research
• "the thing about funding is who owns the agenda"
• "you are joining the world as underdogs"
• " i am an insider, I hear correctly"