Sistema educativo para la formación del ingeniero de 2020

The Fiji Education Review Commission (Subramani, 2000) clearly recommended that local knowledge of indigenous people ought to be vigorously explored and integrated into formal curricula of all levels of education in Fiji. The report also noted that curricula in Fiji continued to be heavily influenced by Western educational concepts and ideas and there was a need to integrate more indigenous knowledge and ways of learning in Fiji. Professor Tupeni Baba, a Pacific scholar, also voiced the need to explore the indigenous knowledge of health and practices of Pacific people and integrate them into the western dominated disciples of medicine (Baba, 2004). Western medicine has been so dominant in health and nursing practice in the Pacific that indigenous knowledge and health practices are seen as superstitious or unimportant by indigenous health practitioners themselves. Tukuitonga (2000) reported that traditional healing is widely practiced in the Pacific and the many Pacific cultures continue to have health and illness beliefs that are shaped by these different cultures. However, Tukuitonga insists that these traditional cultural beliefs and practices compounded by Christian doctrines tend to delay the presentation of illness or injury to health care centres and thus delay the abilities of the western health practitioners to make health improvements and changes.

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During the review of the curriculum, teachers recollected the lack of consideration for indigenous knowledge as important knowledge. However the Consultants’ report mentioned that:

There remains room within this curriculum for traditional healing and cultural pragmatics to be explored alongside the more ‘scientific’ and technical explanation of the subjects and content including evidence-based nursing. (Usher, 2004a)

The exploration of cultural pragmatics and indigenous perspectives of health and illness needed to have been made clear to the teachers; it appeared that the teachers did not understand this intention of the curriculum and were not aware of this statement. The lack of cultural consideration of indigenous health practices of Fijian people within the medical and nursing curricula could be a major contributing factor in the increasing morbidity and mortality rates of Fijian people (M. Pande, et al., 2004). There was no evidence that the local ideas and knowledge of indigenous and cultural practices of health and illness were explored from teachers, students and the community to aid in the relevance and appropriateness of the curriculum content. The experiences of implementing the new curriculum by teachers and students were not the same as for those advocating for the change. Whilst the JCU team and the nursing leaders including the school principal expressed their excitement about the new curriculum (Usher, et al., 2004), the teachers lamented the replacement of a better curriculum by one that was incomplete and compartmentalised:

I still feel that the last Diploma programme was a better one. The teaching was very clear, holistic and wholesome. You just teach the A & P, concepts, conditions and management. It is very clear. This one is like ‘cut-cut’ like you don’t know what the other team is teaching. If you want to know you have to sit in their lectures (FSN 03: 20).

I feel that that this curriculum is so compartmentalised that we are risking leaving some important knowledge or gaps in it. I know that there are many disjointed bodies of knowledge being delivered and the teams continuously argue on alignment issues and overlapping in teaching. We have been talking of alignment for three years and we are still talking about it. That is not a good sign. In the previous curriculum everything was complete. I respect this curriculum but I personally prefer the older curriculum because of its completeness, its comprehensiveness and relevance to us in Fiji. I

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don’t know where this curriculum came from or if it was brought in because it worked somewhere! But I tell you it is not working in Fiji (FSN 05: 10).

Even though the MOH and the NMNP Board were the main advocates for the change of curriculum, their actions and record indicate otherwise. The steering committee mentioned in an MOH letter of assurance of support to the FSN never eventuated, as there were no records or recollections of the committees’ work. The NAC being the academic arm of the NMNP Board never wrote a single policy before or after the implementation of the curriculum. In the words of a senior academic at the FSN regarding the NMNP Board and the NAC attitude:

I feel that the NMNP Board just left everything in the school; just like throwing them in the pool to swim and very little was given from them. When we take things to them they also never gave us any indication of their support. Like whenever a comment came, we were not sure whether they liked the curriculum or not! There was never a positive or supportive comment from them! At times I wondered whose decision was it to change the curriculum? Or what was their position in this change? For the NAC, I don’t know what their role is anymore. In the last curriculum, they were quite ignorant, and we were the ones who had been telling them about the processes and what the policies were and then when we expected them to contribute more; they were also just depending on us (FSN 01: 7).

Another senior academic involved in the implementation of the new curriculum echoed similar sentiments.

What NAC? That NAC was very sickly! I doubt very much that the MOH /NAC was viable…I am not sure if the NAC was even aware of the curriculum (FSA 03: 10).

The NAC is composed of members of the NMNP Board of Fiji, the principal of the FSN, representatives of the Ministry of Education and a representative from the Fiji School of Medicine. According to a senior academic staff who was also a long time member of the NAC, the ad hoc nature of the way the NAC conducted its affairs and membership disillusioned the members, especially those from the other ministries and the FSM as they never had the time to prepare or make the time to come because of the nature of the meeting’s notice and preparations:

I do not think the MOH knew about the many ad hoc members that the NAC had. When they cannot form the quorum, they will look out for any

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available tutor to go in and sit and make up the numbers so that they can start the meeting (FSA 03:11).