ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the historical and modern influences of politics, culture, and geography on educational opportunities in Papua New Guinea (PNG), and more specifically, factors that impact childhood education. The PNG Department of Education implements the contemporary reforms through teacher training and a national standards-based curriculum with prescribed syllabi for language, mathematics, English, and culture and community subjects, including science, humanities, arts, and person development disciplines. For elementary teacher training according to PNG reforms, the curriculum is learner-centered with guidelines that require a focus on cultural relevance and constructivist pedagogies. PNG replaced an outcomes-based curriculum with a standards-based curriculum in 2015 with four curricular subject areas: English, Language, Mathematics, and Culture and Community. Criticized in PNG social media for maintaining the same emphases on constructivism as outcomes-based education with no real theoretical paradigm, the curriculum is mandated by the department of education.
