Dr Nicholas Faraclas

Senior Lecturer, University of Papua New Guinea

From Alpha to Omega: Subverting Fundamentalist Education Reforms
to Create New Pedagogies for Resistance in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the education system in Papua New Guinea has been subjected to the same 'restructuring' and 'reform' initiatives that have been responsible for the budget cutbacks, the unbearable teachers' workloads, the steep increases in 'user fees', the dismantling of mechanisms for community and teacher control, and the targeted attacks on pedagogies that encourage critical questioning that have devastated public education worldwide.

By seizing on the contradictions and inherent weaknesses in a restructuring process imposed from above by advocates of economic and educational fundamentalism, Papua New Guinean teachers, students, and communities have managed to utilise the inevitable chaos resulting from the implementation of the reforms as an opportunity to transform the reform programme into pedagogies of resistance that reflect their own identities, needs, and aspirations. This paper focuses on some of the most exciting aspects of these new pedagogies being developed at both the pre-primary and the university levels.

Bionote

Dr Nicholas Faraclas is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Papua New Guinea. He has developed and taught courses and published books and articles in the areas of popular education and theoretical, descriptive, and applied linguistics, and he is now working with indigenous organisations in the movement for popular education throughout Melanesia.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

Presentation Equipment and Other Requests
Overhead projector

Speaking Date/Time Restrictions

Country
Papua New Guinea