"This multi-authored volume draws on the collective experiences of a team of researcher-practitioners, from three Oceanic universities, in an aid-funded intervention program for enhancing literacy learning in Pacific Islands primary education schools. The interventions explored here-in Solomon Islands and Tonga-were implemented via a four-year collaboration which adopted a design-based research approach to bringing about sustainable improvements in teacher and student learning, and in the delivery and evaluation of educational aid. This approach demanded that learning from the context of practice should be determining of both content and process; that all involved in the interventions should see themselves as learners. Essential to the trusting and respectful relationships required for this approach was the program's acknowledgement of relationality as central to indigenous Oceanic societies, and of education as a relational activity. Relationality and Learning in Oceania: Contextualizing Education for Development addresses debates current in both comparative education and international aid. Argued strongly is that relational research-practice approaches (south-south, south-north) which center the importance of context and culture, and the significance of indigenous epistemologies, are required to strengthen education within the post-colonial relational space of Oceania, and to inform the various agencies and actors involved in 'education for development' in Oceania and globally. Maintained is that the development of education structures and processes within the contexts explored through the chapters comprising this volume, continues to be a negotiation between the complexity of historically developed local 'traditions' and understandings and the 'global' imperatives shaped by dominant development discourses"--

"Reading is made easy with this colourful picture dictionary depicting everyday life in our Pacific Island communities. Included in the back are translations for each word in Maori, Fijian, Samoan and Tongan"--Back cover.

The doyen multi-award anthropologist Ruth Finnegan examines the age-old issues of the significance of orality and literacy. A unique, authoritative and readable account on an absolutely fascinating area. Riveting. Not to be missed. Read more in Ruth's fabulous series SWHC series THE SECRET WAYS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATING in the scintillating Callender Press collection.

Political, security, economic and ecological issues in the South Pacific have acquired increasing regional and international prominence. In The South Pacific observers from within and outside the region describe and analyse the dynamics of the region, assessing the problems, issues and prospects of the area.