Pacific elementary school teachers and language policy critique: Context, text and consequences

Abstract

This article explores the issue of language policy analysis for elementary school teachers in the Oceania region, that is Polynesian nations in the southern and eastern, Melanesian nations in the western and Micronesian nations in the northern parts of the Pacific Ocean region. It is grounded in an understanding that education policy work of any kind is contested and political but nevertheless an exercise that elementary school teachers need to engage in. The ideas examined in the article are timely given recent ‘re-thinking’ language policy work across the region initiated in early 2005 by the Institute of Education at the University of the South Pacific and the Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of [basic] Education (PRIDE), in Fiji. This article draws on a template for education policy analysis that enables teachers in particular to ask critical key questions around language policy context, text and consequences (Taylor et al., 1997). These questions offer teachers a language for examining language and language policy issues that concern them in their everyday work and thus a possible way of accessing and contributing to debates from which they are often excluded.