Teacher Education Conditions in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Vanuatu

Teacher education in Melanesia is not always evident in Pacific education literature. This chapter covers four countries – the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji, and Vanuatu – vis-à-vis their historical and colonial contexts and the geopolitical, global-economic, and sociocultural conditions associated with teacher education. The impacts of colonization through the presence of colonial administrations across the four small island nations in Melanesia are often evident through policy development, which shapes implementation decisions around quality teaching and learning, including standards of professional practice. Even though the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji, and Vanuatu are all Melanesian countries, they are also diverse contexts in which teacher education is conceptualized, framed, and uniquely understood. Melanesia is one of three geo-cultural categorizations of the Pacific Islands that was made by French explorer Jules-Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d’Urville (Lawson, The Journal of Pacific History 48:1–22, 2013); the others are Polynesia and Micronesia. While Polynesia means “many islands” and Micronesia “small islands,” Melanesia refers to the “black islands” (Lawson, The Journal of Pacific History 48:1–22, 2013). While Polynesia and Micronesia as labels depict their land size and the spread of their islands, Melanesia pertains to its inhabitants’ complexion and race, which unsurprisingly denotes the kind of racial thinking and hierarchy during those times (Lawson, The Journal of Pacific History 48:1–22, 2013). Dumont could have referred to the “big islands” Melanesians occupy but instead referred to their complexion. Lawson (The Journal of Pacific History 48:1–22, 2013) states that despite the historically negative connotations of Melanesia as a name, this group of countries have embraced it as a form of subregional identity. This chapter covers teacher education in Melanesian countries of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji. Melanesia also includes New Caledonia, West Papua, and Maluku in Indonesia (Lawson, Australian Journal of International Affairs 70:506–524, 2016), and the Torres Strait Islanders of Australia (Lea, Third World Planning Review 16:375–394, 1994)