La visión para la ingeniería civil en 2025

The powerlessness of the teachers was exposed in the way they were dispersed to different subject strands during the curriculum review workshops.

Some of us were quite comfortable where we were working within the curriculum review and we did not want to move to another subject. But they (JCU) kept telling us that we SHOULD move. In PHC, all my team members were taken out and left me and one other tutor to remain in PHC. (FSA 03:2)

Another teacher recorded her experience of the review workshops:

While the curriculum review was going on…you know they changed us around; they took some people from some teams and put them to other teams. I was in FNP to start off with, and then went to PHC because of the IMCI connection and then I don’t know what happened there, there was a total staff change and I ended up in PPD! The reason for the change was that (what they told us) was that everybody needed to understand the different strands. That was how it was put (FSA 02:3).

Teachers were treated as if they did not have a mind of their own and were ignorant. It was made clear from the feelings of teachers that they were undervalued and this feeling of not being important influenced their contribution to the review.

When they changed us around to areas we were not comfortable in, it did not go down well with many of us. There were a lot of ill feelings, uneasiness and feelings of rejection. I started off from PHC and then to Nursing Knowledge and then Nursing Practice…and I now I am in PPD as a ‘reject’ from the other three strands! (FSA 02:4).

Teachers were not allowed to decide their areas for maximum contribution to the review and to the curriculum development. JCU consultants also treated the staff with arrogance and were probably influenced by the way the MOH treated the teachers and the nurses in Fiji. The MOH did not grant the teachers any release time to attend the review workshops and a senior teacher reported that staff members were happy to move in and out of the workshops, which were becoming very boring

And just provided a platform for the consultants to play around with them and make them feel useless. Teachers would run away to the clinical area just to be away from the workshops (FSA 03, p.5).

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Teachers found the workshops to be boring because they did not understand the process of curriculum development and they did not understand the main objectives of the workshops.

The FSN’s administrative position within a service organisation such as the Ministry of Health, and not within the ambit of an educational entity, made it very difficult to address its educational needs posed by the impending change of curriculum. The positioning of the school within the MOH has more disadvantages than advantages. Apart from being isolated from the educational fraternity for a very long time, the school has become a political playground for the MOH and the Head Quarters staff and a sad replica of what it was 25 years ago. The legislative functions of the Ministry of Health in administering an academic institution contributed to abuse and manipulation of its functions by the political processes of the ministry. For example, the lack of control on the part of the school over both the size of the intake of students into the first cohort of the new curriculum and the start date of the programme, exposed the school’s vulnerability as an institution easily manipulated by political forces beyond the control of the school. The on-going investigations into the allegations against a Minister for Health who charged students for government sponsored places at the FSN for a number of years is a further example of problems associated with a lack of academic autonomy (FT: 30/04/08). The teachers’ lack of awareness of the new competency-based curriculum exposed the problem of isolation from mainstream educational ideas by the nursing fraternity in Fiji. The nature of the FSN’s position within the MOH had the greatest impact on the initiation of the curriculum change and the actual implementation of the curriculum.

5.13

Summary

The initiation phase of the educational change described the nature in which the decision to change the FSN curriculum was pursued by the NMNP of Fiji without due consultations with the Fiji School of Nursing leaders. Teaching staff at the FSN were instructed to attend workshops with the JCU consultants without adequate

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consultation on the rationale for the workshops. The lack of enthusiasm displayed by the FSN staff and the difficulties they faced with writing the content of the curriculum are related to the lack of preparation and consultation on the part of the MOH and the NMNP Board. There were neither consultations nor consideration of the consumers and stakeholders’ views on the curriculum review and the subsequent change. It could be argued that this lack of consultation represented negligence of curriculum protocol by the MOH and JCU to the people of Fiji. According to Fullan (2007, p. 83) “the process of initiation can generate meaning or confusion, commitment or alienation, or simply ignorance on the part of the participants and others affected by the change”. The relationship between the initiation and the implementation phases is loosely interactive and the phases can easily affect one another depending on the nature of the events and the quality of participation in the implementation phase.

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