ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the evident tensions and the interplay between policy and practice through an analysis of the convergences and divergences of the perspectives across the three groups of education stakeholders in relationship with the key theoretical perspectives, including studies of other countries. It examines the different means employed to mediate the tensions. The analysis revealed that the tensions identified by the participants can be traced to processes of modernisation in the 1960s that persist despite education reforms aimed at bringing together the traditional and modern elements. The participants' own nuanced understandings of the different knowledges and worldviews that interact in state education serve to highlight another reason why there are tensions in the discourse. The chapter explains conventional research on traditional or indigenous knowledges which attends to contrasts and continuities between different epistemologies but does not detect or address highly pronounced vacillations, similar to those that emerged amongst the stories of the education stakeholders.
