ABSTRACT
Five decades of progressive reforms in Papua New Guinea (PNG) provide a longitudinal country study of the inter-relationship between cultural epistemology and formalistic paradigms. Formalism in PNG is grounded in epistemological constructs, originally from pre-colonial formal education, based on transmission of given knowledge. It was reinforced by the teaching style in colonial schools and a systematic approach to school inspections after independence in 1975. A summary of research on eight major progressive primary and secondary curriculum reforms since the 1960s finds they had no apparent sustained success in changing formalistic teaching towards progressive practice despite large professional, administrative and financial inputs. The perennial failure of progressive curriculum reform to generate paradigm shift in the classroom indicates that ongoing curriculum development would be better derived from formalistic classroom practice and the deep cultural constructs that students and teachers bring to the classroom. The wider relevance is that PNG is a long-term example of the worldwide failure of progressive reforms to compete outside their own Anglo-American cultural context with the cultural traditions embodied in revelatory epistemologies and formalistic paradigms.
