as well as through core subjects such as physical education, music and arts
and crafts, and extra-curricular activities such as clubs and cadet training. This
finding emphasizes, again, that Fiji has an academic education system and
a content- and assessment- driven focus, to the point that it is considered
acceptable that NCS are only taught-learned outside the formal curriculum.
Some teachers indicated that they were ‘finding their way’ or ‘trying their
best’ (PT: 10 per cent, T: 8 per cent), and a small, but nonetheless alarming,
percentage responded that they feel ‘lost’ when it comes to NCS (PT: 5
per cent). The same proportion of secondary teachers said that they
wondered if they were the right people to teach NCS (ST: 5 per cent). Analysis
suggests that there is a general uncertainty regarding whether NCS really is
covered at school and whether participants felt this was the correct response.
More than half of the teachers expressed the need for further training to
enhance the teaching and learning of NCS (PT: 55 per cent, ST: 60 per cent).
A particularly disturbing finding is that many teachers feel that they are unable
to move beyond subject-content coverage and assessment. This perception
is due to a number of pressures, including syllabus content demands (PT: 35
per cent, ST: 42 per cent), internal assessment (PT: 45 per cent, ST: 28 per cent),
school expectations (PT: 25 per cent, ST: 10 per cent), parental expectations
(PT: 25 per cent, ST: 10 per cent) and student expectations (PT: 20 per cent, ST:
5 per cent). These findings corroborate findings of the study by Tuinamuana
et al., (2006) in which teachers said they felt pressured to apply a ‘banking’
pedagogy.
The need to change pedagogical practices does not seem to have been
ingrained into teachers, given the range of pressures they face, and which
perpetuate the system of content and examinations. Teachers are aware of
the importance of responsive and innovative pedagogy, in line with the new
curriculum focus as outlined in the NCF, but there have been inadequate
efforts towards changing teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and attitudes, and
there has been neglect of the critical factors for establishing a sense of teacher
ownership of the change (Carless, 2013).
Creative avenues for teaching and learning
In addition to having heavy teaching loads, teachers implement extra-
curricular activities that enable the teaching and learning of non-cognitive
skills (through non-formal and informal learning experiences).