ACADEMIC ASSESSMENT

Academic Assessment

Academic Assessment

Introduction

Pacific islands classrooms experience a mismatch between traditional village wisdom and the western model of education found in the schools. Traditional knowledge is often shared through storytelling, modeling and guided experience. Children are expected to listen, watch and emulate their elders. Stories, chants, songs, dances and orations are at the heart and soul of island people. As the increasing hustle and bustle of western life impacts island villages, there is less time and energy for elders to share this “village wisdom” with their children. Many parents and community members already feel the sense of loss and look to their schools and churches to restore a balance.

There is a growing consciousness among Pacific educators that bilingualism and biculturalism must be valued in Pacific island pedagogy. Although the schools are western in design and appearance, teachers feel very real pressure from their village communities to honor and include traditional knowledge and culturally-based “ways of knowing.” As a result, curriculum specialists throughout Micronesia are exploring ways to develop curriculum materials in their local languages and incorporate cultural knowledge into classroom activities.

Most of the islands of Micronesia and Polynesia are relatively homogenous in language and culture, with teachers and children speaking the local language of their island as a first language. The emphasis on first language and the cultural content inherently carried by a language, however, is often lost at the schoolhouse door. While English is the second language of the village, it is typically the first language of schoolhouse literacy - with most story books and other print materials published in English language in the USA, New Zealand or Australia (Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, 1999).

Current practices of English language instruction also fail many Pacific island children. Although children learn to “sound out” or decode printed English words, their comprehension of English text remains lamentably low. As one Samoan educator expressed, “I could read the words when I left for college, but I couldn't understand them.” (Alaimaleata, 2002). This reading comprehension problem is becoming glaringly apparent to educators in Guam and Hawaii who are now facing waves of immigration from island children. The children are struggling in school and, in many cases, failing.

In this paper, we discuss the Pacific Voices project, an initiative designed to merge educational technologies with literacy learning in these Pacific island contexts. The goals of the project were to:

foster bilingual learning;

place value on first languages and traditional knowledge; and

bring community wisdom into the school, thereby promoting a synergy between village wisdom and western literacy.

The project used multimedia applications in innovative ways that allowed teachers and students to practice reading, writing and oral communication skills. In addition, technologies such as videoconferencing, were used to connect island classrooms and share student-created projects between island classrooms.

This initiative was developed as a partnership between the University of Hawaii and Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL). Funded by the Pacific Regional Education in Technology Consortium (PR*TEC) grant from the US Department of Education (USDoE), the project's reach extended ...