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Promoting transmission of traditional navigation knowledge in Pacific classrooms
A UNESCO Workshop on 鈥淭he Canoe Is the People鈥 interactive educational resource, jointly organized by the Cook Islands Ministry of Education and UNESCO鈥檚 Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems programme, was held on 3-6 December 2013 in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. Thirty teachers and curriculum developers from across the Pacific, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, New Zealand, Samoa and Tonga, were brought together to work with the interactive educational resource called 鈥淭he Canoe Is the People: Indigenous Navigation in the Pacific鈥.
This online educational tool brings into the classroom the in-depth knowledge that Pacific Islanders possess about their ocean environment. It was especially conceived to encourage Pacific youth to take pride in their heritage, and to keep their ancestral knowledge alive.
鈥淭he Canoe Is the People鈥 resource pack includes: 1. an interactive multimedia resource that is available either or as:
- a CD-ROM;
- a Teacher鈥檚 Manual;
- a Learner鈥檚 Text; and
- a large Poster and Map.
It is designed as an Open Education Resource that can be adopted and adapted for use in different education curricula, as well as in different languages. Currently the online resource exists in English and New Zealand Maori, and the full resource pack is also being adapted from English for use in the Maori school system in the Maori language.
The objectives of the workshop were threefold:
- to familiarize educators with 鈥淭he Canoe is the People鈥 educational resource and to map it to country-specific curricula.
- to develop work units based on 鈥淭he Canoe is the People鈥 that reinforce the inclusion of Pacific Islander knowledge in the classroom.
- to allow for reflection on how Pacific Islander knowledge is recognized and integrated in learning and teaching programmes across the Pacific and how the 鈥淐anoe is the People鈥 resource pack can be used to strengthen such efforts.
During the workshop, participants were particularly interested in sharing information about educational practices and the contexts in which educators work in different Pacific countries. The strong engagement and interest in the workshop and its outcomes, as well as the high level of participant satisfaction, underlined the relevance and value of 鈥淭he Canoe is the People鈥 as an educational resource for the contemporary Pacific.
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