Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/933439
- Title
- TVET in Fiji: attitudes, perceptions and discourses
- Author/Creator
-
Tagicakiverata, Isimeli Waibuta
- Institution
- University of Newcastle. Faculty of Education & Arts, School of Education
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Fiji is undergoing major reforms. This study looks at the new climate of TVET in Fiji where the current government has given the green light to a new platform of TVET initiatives. This includes the newly formed Fiji National University that gives equal status to traditional and new technological professions. At the same time a broad-based secondary school curriculum with both academic and TVET subjects has been introduced. However, community acceptance of reinvented TVET has been very slow. This study is a response to this apparent lack of acceptance from the community. It focuses on the perceptions and attitudes towards TVET of students in junior secondary school. It also examines current discourses expressed about TVET by key stakeholders in the Fijian education system, including pupils, parents, teachers, education officers and the Minister for Education. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used during the fieldwork process to gather data from four case study schools from parts of Fiji, and from education stakeholders. The four theories guiding this study are: Constructivism, Social Reproduction, Post-Colonial Theory and Sociology of Knowledge. This study found that there is a mismatch between growth-oriented labour force needs and skilled capacities gained through education. Furthermore, a significant finding related to the conditions that give rise to the habitus is that inequalities in terms of career opportunities and aspirations are reproduced by the education system especially for children from large, poor families and those who live with relatives. Through efforts to work effectively with ‘grass-roots’ Fijian community members this study developed a new culturally appropriate methodology of ‘veivosaki-yaga’ during the focus group interviews. This study found competing viewpoints between stakeholders and between the different ways various groups of people currently understand TVET. Analysis of this contradictory data produced a discourse hierarchy and classification model which succinctly illustrates how TVET in Fiji is defined and understood differently by different stakeholders. This hierarchal model suggests possible reasons why there has been no consistent support for, and implementation of, TVET in Fiji. While there was consensus among high profile stakeholders that TVET has the potential to help Fiji meet its MDGs as well as its other developmental objectives, among ‘grass-roots’ stakeholders there was no such optimism or idealism. In Fiji TVET has a generally negative perception in the community. In part this may be due to the diverse discourses that exist between major stakeholders such as senior government officials, teachers, parents and students. People at the top of the hierarchy associate TVET with highly paid professions and trades, whereas those at the lower levels of the hierarchy consider TVET to be second-class education leading to low status, low wage-earning, labour intensive jobs. Finally this study proposes a name and identity transformation from TVET to CTP – Career Training and Placement - to fulfill the vision and transformative discourse of major stakeholders and to eventually change the perceptions of the community about vocational education. CTP has the potential to be an inclusive innovative programme that aligns school subjects with career placement so that there is smoother transition between school and work for students in Fiji. In such a programme, school subjects and post-school training formerly viewed negatively as ‘TVET’ take their rightful place in the range of career-oriented study options available to junior secondary pupils and their families.
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Date
- 2012
- Keyword(s)
-
Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET);
Fiji;
Career Training and Placement (CTP);
secondary education
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Rights
- Copyright 2012 Isimeli Waibuta Tagicakiverata
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/933439
- Language
- eng
-
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