Negotiating conflicting discourses of quality teaching in Fiji: initial teacher education and practicum at the University of the South Pacific

Burnett, Greg, Prakash, Kusum, and Sharma, Vinata (2019) Negotiating conflicting discourses of quality teaching in Fiji: initial teacher education and practicum at the University of the South Pacific. Waikato Journal of Education, 24 (1).

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View at Publisher Website: https://doi.org/10.15663/wje.v24i1.647
 
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Abstract

This article identifies a number of conflicting discourses informing education in Fiji and their impact on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students. The socially constructivist progressivism of the Ministry of Education and the ITE provider is being eroded by a set of socially conservative discourses symptomatic of neoliberal education reforms elsewhere. It is the Practicum where the conflict is most acutely evidenced. To highlight the conflict 90 ITE students, as ethno-graphic fieldworkers, have used an accepted quality teaching checklist to record the teaching they witnessed while on practicum. The resulting misalignments between discourses of quality teaching identified in this article and highlighted by ITE students contributes to debates about what constitutes effective teaching in Fiji. Additionally, despite the multi-discursive reality of Fijian education the article suggests ITE based on a learning-centred rather than learner-centred approach where teachers make critical choices for teaching based on links between pedagogy, context and consequence.

Item ID: 58981
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2382-0373
Keywords: Fiji, practicum, teacher education, social constructivism, behaviourism, learning-centred
Copyright Information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Date Deposited: 23 Jul 2019 02:40
FoR Codes: 39 EDUCATION > 3903 Education systems > 390399 Education systems not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes: 93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9305 Education and Training Systems > 930501 Education and Training Systems Policies and Development @ 34%
93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9305 Education and Training Systems > 930502 Management of Education and Training Systems @ 33%
93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9305 Education and Training Systems > 930503 Resourcing of Education and Training Systems @ 33%
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