Schooling, Knowledge and Power: Social Transformation in the Solomon Islands

This paper compares traditional education with national schooling in the Solomon Islands, concentrating on the nature, meaning, and transmission of knowledge, and the impact of an imposed Western model of schooling on social change. We examine: micro-level structuring of teaching-learning interactions which embody knowledge as content, and teach important social values and ways of thinking; and macro-level processes in formal education as it developed in the Solomons, together with societal changes contributed to by schooling as a social institution. Our primary focus is rural West Kwara'ae, where for the past ten years we have conducted research on culture and children's language socialization. Our discussion of schooling is based on historical sources, government publications, observations at a rural primary school, interviews with headmasters, teachers, and parents, and data we collected on children's socialization

Whose Knowledge? Epistemological Collisions in Solomon Islands Community Development

We show in this article how modernization, disguised as “community development,” continues to fail rural villages in Solomon Islands despite the supposed movement toward a more people-centered, bottom-up philosophy in development education and practice. We focus on the case study of a Kwara‘ae (Malaita island) rural, locally owned and operated project aimed at giving unemployed male youth a stake in the community and preventing their off-island migration. Successful for a decade, the project was destroyed by the intervention of a retired government official who, because of his education, training, and work with outside development agencies, imposed a modernization framework, including centralization of leadership and the valuing of Anglo-European knowledge over indigenous knowledge. While agreeing with the theoretical argument for indigenous knowledge in development, we argue that it is equally important that development be guided by people’s indigenous epistemology/ies and indigenous critical praxis for (re)constructing and applying knowledge

Ethnographic Inquiry into Second Language Acquisition and Instruction

IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, we in ESL have become increasingly aware of the important role culture and cultural differences play in communication, learning, and thinking. Yet research methods traditionally used in our field have been less than successful in clarifying this role, or in helping us to take account of it in teaching. Ethnography is potentially a very important tool for basic research because it gives us a way to focus on the intersection of language, social context, and society. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what is involved in good ethnographic research both descriptively and analytically, and to illustrate the value of an ethnographic approach to research in ESL and second language acquisition. First, we will offer a basic definition of "ethnography." Next, we will briefly describe key principles of ethnographic research (further discussed in Watson-Gegeo, 1988). Then we will illustrate our points through two examples of research in which we are individually involved

"How We Know": Kwara'ae Rural Villagers Doing Indigenous Epistemology

We examine Kwara‘ae (Solomon Islands) indigenous epistemology and indigenous critical praxis, including sources of knowledge and strategies for validating and critiquing evidence and knowledge construction. To illustrate indigenous epistemology in action, we focus on the Kwara‘ae Genealogy Project, a research effort by rural villagers aimed at creating an indigenous written account of Kwara‘ ae culture. In recording, (re)constructing, and writing Kwara‘ae culture, project members are not only doing indigenous epistemology, but also reflecting on and critiquing their own indigenous strategies for knowledge creation. We hope that the work illustrated here will inspire other Native Pacific Islander scholars to carry out research on their native or indigenous epistemologies

Patterns of Suicide in West Kwara‘ae, Malaita, Solomon Islands

Conference paper for an East-West Center Conference on Suicide in the Pacific, 198

Reviewing the black history show : how computers can change the writing process

Includes bibliographical references (leaf 17)Supported in part by contract no. 3008100314 and C-400-81-0030 from the U.S. Department of Educatio

How computers can change the writing process

A study of writing in a sixth-grade classroom using QUILL software highlighted the value of ethnographic observation, showed that the most important impact of computers on writing may be on the classroom "writing system," and revealed how reading and writing are social actions--communication between social actors.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe