Failure Of Progressive Reforms In PNG

Abstract

Papua New Guinea is a comparatively uncommon example of a developing country with an extensive research literature from the 1960s through to the 1990s that informed educational policy and practice. Chapter 7 broadens the examples from secondary teacher education to evidence about a range of official reforms that were deliberate efforts to replace formalistic teaching and curriculum. The chapter reviews some of the more solid qualitative and quantitative research on seven reforms, finding without exception that the progressive directions of change hypothesised by the stages model did not occur. Major progressive primal); and secondary classroom reform efforts have failed for 50 years in Papua New Guinea despite large professional, administrative and financial inputs. In itself each example of failure may not be convincing, but in the absence of any evidence that there have been any sustained successes, the body of findings amounts to a damning case against progressive reforms in Papua New Guinea.