Comments

Interesting reading about Tonga!

Thanks Sean - we hadn't seen that.

Hi Terence. I'm not sure if Jo or yourself have seen this but it might be interesting given the above experience: http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/publications/publications/show/214

As a new incoming 2013 Students Representative Council (SRC) President and one of the senior students I totally agree with all the points and recommendations made by Scott MacWilliam about University of Papua New Guinea. I've been studying at UPNG for 6 years; completed my BA (Political Science) in 2008 and am now in my third year of a Law degree. Whatever MacWilliam mentioned about UPNG is true to the best of my knowledge. There is a great need for bringing UPNG to a next level to meet the international standards and become competitive in the region. Right now, we are no way near to the international standard.... Our only hope is God who will one day make it become possible. Our Government needs to seriously look into it, and the UPNG Administration needs to manage funds properly and extend their arms outside to bring funds in to develop this institution. Donor Agencies such as AusAID, NZAID, etc are willing to help but its just that we need to seek rather than wait.

This discussion is getting really interesting! Dan, your comment draws attention to what I think is a major issue, which is the alarming trend towards the “homogenization” of education systems around the world. Countries like the US and Australia, among others, seem to be headed down a path of unrelenting attention to matters such as structural knowledge and technical skills reflected in demands for more standardized testing of literacy, numeracy and science, more control through setting minimum “standards”, rankings, and more accountability. Others, including Finland, are not going down that path but have adopted a more balanced approach reflecting emphases on creativity, values, morality, and culture. (Have a look at books by Ken Robinson on this or his talks <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>) From what you write, Indonesia seems to be going down this more balanced path. Personally, provided there is good balance in the curriculum, I think this is terrific! Why do developing countries have to blindly follow what is too often thought to be so great about western education? When I was working for 3 years at Universitas Indonesia, it was plain to me that the worst influence on universities then was in striving to be like an American or European university but without the resources, shared values, and with totally different needs. Why shouldn’t Indonesia educate according to its own values and culture? As to PAKEM, I believe this is no more or less compatible with the second curriculum approach, provided that teachers, as always, are fully equipped with a sound repertoire of skills to choose the most appropriate methods and classroom arrangements for helping children achieve particular learning goals. Even the military in liberal democracies, an organisation that may be fairly described as indoctrinating its members, uses a wide range of student-centred learning methods that encourage critical thinking, and, in fact, did substantial work in pioneering many of them for their training needs. <a href="http://www.humrro.org/corpsite/" rel="nofollow">HumRRO</a> in the US has done a lot of work in this area for the US military from at least the 1960’s.

Bob: Many thanks for keeping this dialogue going. I will send email contacts of a few other friends--I don't know how to link them to this. The issue I think will be very pertinent to the new curriculum if it is eventually formalized as being discussed in the papers now. It seems the focus on religion and citizenship, etc. is a way to address radicalism, "primordialism" (whatever term they use to mean ethic group focused vs. nationalism focused) and even bullying and fights among students. I guess this is a worthy goal but perhaps brings the system back to nation building and pancasila educational goals in the early Suharto years, as Mark writes, and a turn from the currently expressed goal of preparing youth to compete in the global economy. (Heavy investments in international standard schools follows from this policy.) It will be interesting to see if they will continue to state the latter as the over arching goal of education while changing the underpinings that mitiagate (remove sciene and English with more religion and (Indonesian) citizedship. I don't know which is better and that is up to Indonesian leaders. Only stakeholders should at least be cognizant of inherent contridictions. So if they go through with this curriculum change what is the future of instructional methods such as Pakem which is supposed to engender critical thining and self expression? Would this be an inherent contridiction? I have no answers but would welcome opinions

Pure speculation, but could a failure to release the evaluation be linked to the continuing consideration of labour mobility as part of the PACER-Plus negotiations? Officials from Australia, New Zealand and the Forum Island Countries will meet in Samoa this month to continue the trade talks - including discussing whether the SWS and NZ's RSE Scheme can meaningfully be included in a final PACER-Plus agreement.

"A better defence is that a lot of aid will not generate economic development but, done properly, can at least make life substantially less miserable to millions of people who live below the poverty line"...That's exactly what elites in extractive political insitutions want aid to provide...for political stability so they can continue to extract wealth and power while aid agencies continue to maintain political stability in their country. Aid therefore can be viewed as keeping these institutions in power.

Each Resource Project runs its own TCS Projects; eg; Oil Search Ltd, Porgera Gold Mine via Barrick, Ok Tedi etc. but they all come together under the oversight of the Department of National Planning & Monitoring under the Economic Sector and are all approved by the Internal Revenue Commission. Thus, the best places to check for a summary of TCS projects would be DNPM & IRC. You would find a list of projects, type of project, costs, duration of implementation whether the projects are new or in some exceptional cases; rehabiliation of existing proejcts.

Bravo! The post 2015 agenda is fast becoming a very noisy debate dominated by the usual suspects. I don't think the ideas that CGD, ODI, etc. are bad, but I agree with Morton that once the debate heads in the direction they suggest it will become harder and harder for voices from the South to be heard and more importantly, to influence the outcome. I am hopeful that given the more varied international development community today (compared with 2000) that there are many factors and forces that will not allow this to happen. Nevertheless, we in the developed countries should be more generous, stepping back to allow others to take the lead; that, unfortunately, is not likely to happen.

Hi Stephen, I agree with you about the need to publically publish information about what we are claiming we are spending on foreign aid. The essence about published information however is whether it is meaningful or valueless? While the article you refer to may well have limited horizons, I suggest the real issue is not whether consultancies are either good or bad but whether they areeffective in producing results at the grass roots? The experience of many would suggest that after decades of huge amounts of aid monies being spent on wonderful sounding projects, the effects are minimal at best at the level where something is desperately needed. Take for example the recent media report on the provision of AusAID support in the fight against drug resistant TB in Western Provence of PNG directly opposite the Torres Strait. What is really happening as reported by a journo who actually visited the region and saw with his own eyes is I’ll bet not what is being reported to those who are signing off on the program. Sorry mate. I don’t agree with you about it being hard to address compliance issues concerning foreign aid. Having worked at the kunai roots level I can assure you it is very easy. All you have to do is accept that a published assessment is only as good as the methodology used to prepare the report. What use is there to get those wonderful, glowing reports of achievement if they are in fact, based on totally meaningless statistics and misinformnation? Total expenditure figures are the beloved addiction of politicians who quote them ad nausium but don't have any idea about what was actually achieved in reality. They are also the meat of those who feed off the public purse without achieving any long term results for those who we are supposed to be assisting. If a consultancy is worth its salt, it should provide an effective reporting mechanism that assesses achievements based on a prior set practical benchmark or target. If you can’t measure practical results, you can’t manage a program. Could it be (perish the thought), that those who are currently involved in consultancies might be slightly partial in this area of concern?

The constructive and thoughtful comments here tend to reflect a number of key matters that seem important to me. They all highlight the great importance of considering culture and context whether it is Uzbekistan or Indonesia. In the case of Indonesia, Sopantini reminds us of the need to be more local in our thinking, such as considering culture in Flores, rather than the broader concept of Indonesian culture, and Mark draws attention to different concepts of knowledge and learning that have implications for teaching. Dan asks if there is research on methods used by different countries that link to success in PISA tests. Yes, there is a literature on this of which the "Mathematics Teaching and Learning Strategies in PISA" by the OECD, 2010, is one example. In relation to your comment, Dan, these general conclusions are pertinent: “Teaching and learning strategies are complex processes that interact with one another, suggesting that in-depth, context-specific analyses are necessary to fully understand each strategy’s role in enhancing student performance. With a few interesting exceptions, most teaching and learning strategies do not have a direct, robust and consistent relationship with student performance across countries. The relationship between the strategies and performance tends to be moderated by other factors such as student attitudes and background, suggesting that these issues cannot be analysed separately (page 9).” (Both this study and the one below are discoverable by Googling the titles.) To emphasise the importance of culture and society in these tests, have a look at this publication by the Finnish National Board of Education, "Main factors behind the good PISA reading results in Finland". This publication points out the importance of reading in Finland – “one of the best library systems in the world, the library is the most beloved cultural institution” and “the number of books borrowed annually from public libraries and number of new books for children and young people is high”. Other indicators of reading are cited. Compare these values and habits with Indonesia! The above points also relate to the comments made by Chimi Thonden. Chimi’s comments about “incremental change” are raised in the discussion of the book Poor Economics here. It is a pity that there are so few examples of continuing support from national governments or donors to continue with incremental changes over time. The new USAID PRIORITAS project in Indonesia is one welcome exception to this, however. The other pity, and this is implied in Dan’s comments, is that there is very little quality research upon which to base policies and practices in relation to teaching in Indonesia. Even the data we do have from shorter commissioned studies and from routine monitoring and evaluation is not always well used in drawing lessons for practice and policy development. Like others, I have often wondered whether formal or progressive approaches are best. But while we await better evidence to help make our decisions for specific contexts, I think I will still be guided by conclusions reached by R.B. Spence in the 1928 edition of the Journal of Educational Psychology, 84 years ago: “The real problem is not "Is method A better than method B or method C?", but rather "Under what conditions does each method produce the most effective results?" And in relation to the selection and use of one approach to teaching, in this case in universities, he observed: “The decrying of the wholesale use of lectures is probably justified. The wholesale decrying of the use of lecturing is just as certainly not justified.”