‘It Takes a Village’: How Narewa Village, Fiji Supported Students During a 9-month School Closure During the Covid-19 Pandemic (67264)
Session Chair: Kerrie Pickering
Saturday, January 7, 2023 (11:45)
Session: Session 2
Room: 323B
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
This research explored how schooling in a Pacific Island village coped with school closures and online learning through a case study of Narewa village, Viti Levu, Fiji. When governments across the Pacific closed schools to contain the spread of COVID-19, classes moved to online platforms, which was challenging for students, educators, and families living in areas that had limited Internet service, technical expertise and support. In Fiji, the Ministry of Education created a standard curriculum and allowed teachers autonomy over how it was implemented. In Narewa, like many rural villages in Fiji, reliable Internet with suitable bandwidth is not available, nor do all households have access to computing equipment. We conducted interviews with a District Senior Education Officer, the turaga-ni-koro (village headman), parents, youth and teachers in Narewa to learn how they coped with this schooling challenge. The data revealed that teachers prepared weekly worksheets following the curriculum and had the turaga-ni-koro distribute them to the students at their homes and collect them a week later. The village supported students by maintaining the normal pre-pandemic restriction week-day routine of playing the lali (drum) at 5pm signalling it was homework time. Village elders and preachers reinforced to parents and children the importance of maintaining their education. Additionally, the National curfew kept parents at home and many parents used this time to help their children with the worksheets. Like many villages in the Pacific Island Region, Narewa provides an example of the resilience and innovation occurring at the community scale that can be incorporated into strategies elsewhere as countries strive to build back better.
Authors:
Kerrie Pickering, Brock University, Canada
Tristan Pearce, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Kerrie Pickering is an Associate Researcher at University of the Sunshine Coast
See this presentation on the full schedule – Schedule
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress