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

Abstract

This article identifies a number of conflicting discourses informing education in Fiji and their impact on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes and 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 ethnographic 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, contribute to debates about what constitutes effective teaching in Fiji. The complex set of discourses identified as impacting on initial teacher education and education in Fiji more generally can be utilised by ITE programmes to generate critical reflection among students. One way to do this is to take a learning-centred approach where ITE students are encouraged to make critical choices for teaching based on links between pedagogy, context and consequence