A Locally Focused and Sustainable International Teacher Education Project within Oceania

Abstract

Developing Pacific Island Countries (PIC) often battle with remoteness, a lack of available resources resulting in outdated infrastructure, too few well-trained local teacher educators and a heightened lack of available local teachers. Approaches to alleviate these problems in many PICs have included the employment of expatriate teachers to supplement teacher supply from local teacher education institutions. In the Republic of Nauru, a model is being implemented where the Department of Education has partnered with the University of New England (UNE) to develop a two-phase quality teacher education programme with a Pacific focus. The mixed-mode delivery offers online teaching material with continuous full-time on-island support to enable the students to remain in-country for their studies in Early Childhood Education, Primary Education, or Secondary Education. A sustainable and transformational aspect of this model is its mentoring. Those mentored will in turn provide academic support to help later cohorts complete this Pacific-focused international teaching qualification. The project design has an associated multi-faceted longitudinal research and programme evaluation component. Data collected includes students' online reflective learning journals, in-class and online interaction, and video footage and course assessment data as well as interviews with students, their families, the Department of Education, and the University lecturers. This paper reports on the project design, the characteristics of the cohort and identified changes in students' perceptions of themselves as a teacher and learner during the first year.