UU114 Week 13 Rethinking Pacific Education- Dr Priscilla Puamau

my name is priscilla por mao i'm an indigenous fijian from fiji and i would like to just say a few things about myself it's just going to be very very quick i've worked in the education sector for 38 years i began as a teacher of english at the secondary school level and then i became a teacher of teachers

if you like and this is preparing teacher teachers for the classroom as a teacher educator so i've done 21 years in the development space in three projects that were funded by donors and um and i and the important thing that i am doing at the moment is saying i'm retired retired from work after 38 years and

that was such a joyous time of my life not to be able to go to work again at least to be paid for work and my greatest joys are really spending time in getting to know god better and also spending time with my six great grandchildren i was an education advisor on the pride

project in 2005 when i wrote this paper that you've been all given to read for this course the question that uh the first question that i'd like to speak on or around is what was the rethinking pacific education initiative and pride all about what started it what was my experience of what was happening in those early

days the rethinking pacific education initiative or rpei which changed to rpe ipp which is rethinking pacific education for and by pacific people is a groundbreaking intellectual project that enables specific scholars to rethink and critique their current education system rpe ipp aims to enable pacific people to shape and drive their own education systems in their own countries

drawing on their own local traditional cultures values and knowledge systems i was blessed to be part of a group of pacific educators who gathered at jewish spiel of our campus in 2001 for the first ever colloquium on rethinking pacific education this is exactly 20 years ago our deliberations resulted in a publication in 2001 called the tree of