Investigating National Curriculum Implementation in Papua New Guinea (PNG)

Abstract

There is a national concern in Papua New Guinea (PNG) about re-construction of social systems because the education offered was irrelevant to the needs of the PNG society. The Government of PNG reformed its national education system and developed and implemented a new national curriculum for human and societal development for elementary, primary and secondary education sectors. The purpose of this study was to investigate some PNG teachers’ pedagogical decisions and actions and the nature of student learning and development in the implementation of this new national curriculum in contemporary classroom contexts. The study was carried out in two PNG schools - one an urban church school and the other a rural government school. The understanding, perceptions and ‘lived-experiences’ were explored in the implementation of the new national PNG curriculum of twelve teachers and forty-eight students (six teachers and twenty-four students in each school). Within an interpretive research paradigm, a qualitative case study approach was employed to generate data, using interviews, video observations and documentary analysis as data gathering tools. The data were analysed inductively and grouped into themes around the key research questions. The findings of the study were underpinned by theoretical frameworks of behaviourist and constructivist pedagogies of curriculum development and delivery. The study found that the PNG teachers adapted the new national curriculum by applying iterative interpretation processes to construct their own interpretation. The teachers identified and selected appropriate international knowledge and integrated this with suitable and relevant PNG indigenous knowledge. This integration is the basis on which the teachers constructed new knowledge or realities, which they delivered to the students using both constructivist teaching approaches and traditional behaviourist teaching approaches. Although the teachers’ constructed realities or knowledge appeared to be superficial rather than deep and problem solving in nature, the PNG students mediated on the teachers’ realities, and constructed their own individual and shared realities. The student learning is being described in this thesis as the long-term learning that results from micro-curriculum implementation.