Interpreting adult distance education students' learning practices from a Melanesian sociocultural perspective :a case study from the University of Papua New Guinea Open College

This thesis explores the pedagogical practices of distance education in Papua New Guinea (PNG) involving adult students as they interact with print media mode of communication. My research was motivated after identification of a gap in the literature with regard to enhanced insight into the adult distance learners in the PNG context. My research focus incorporates PNG's unique indigenous cultural practices, forms of social organisation, knowledge and ways in which these 'ways of being' frame the uses of distance learning resources. The research aims to use a concept of 'pedagogic structures' as a way of interrogating these forms of social organisation and social position [re]construction. Collaboration and interaction as pedagogic themes resonates throughout the research. My research design voice takes an interpretive approach, through observation and informed by ethnographic research techniques. Fifteen students (3 females and 12 males), from three study centres and four lecturers, two tutor/mentors and four instructional designers participated with the researcher as participant observer. Qualitative analysis of data used a heuristic approach to code and categorise emerging themes from interviews, observations, and questionnaire responses. Distance learning resources and students' records were also examined. The intersecting concepts of ososom and osisini are introduced as orientations of learning in a distance education pedagogy. My research is theoretically guided by the ideas of Bernstein, Bourdieu and Moore, opening new avenues for analysing and shedding light on distance pedagogical practices on the premise that pedagogic practices are socially and culturally situated. My main research findings reveal that while the transmitter prescribes certain pedagogic principles, the adult distance learners go beyond these prescribed types of interaction to acquire knowledge. Students draw from their invisible social capital and pedagogic practices of tribal and communal forms of organisation to manage learning in their invisible world. This research points to the prioritisation for the enhancement of more meaningful collaborative and communal ways of distance education pedagogic transactions in PNG