Language, educational inequalities and epistemic access: crafting alternative pathways for Fiji
Abstract
Purpose
The goal of this article is two-fold. The first is to contribute new insights to inform education policies for addressing the underlying educational inequalities and injustices that are caused by lack of epistemic access in the context of Fiji higher education. The second is to explore how the Grounded Theory Methodology can be applied to longitudinal language testing research that seeks to reverse epistemic injustices and educational inequalities in Fiji and other comparable multilingual countries.
Design/methodology/approach
To explore how the Grounded Theory Methodology can be applied to longitudinal language testing research that seeks to reverse epistemic injustices and educational inequalities in Fiji and other comparable multilingual countries. The study was conducted at a university in Fiji where 120 students were sampled at the beginning of the first year and at the end of their first year of university programme. The same cohort was tracked throughout the project, out of which 30 students were interviewed at the end of the first year.
Findings
The four indicators include: (1) lack of teaching and learning resources, (2) language barriers, (3) problems with the medium of instruction and (4) shortage of experienced teachers.
Originality/value
Although widely acknowledged in previous studies from elsewhere, the indicators of educational inequalities identified in this study are worth reporting on due to the unique socio-cultural and linguistic context of Fiji.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the support of PhD supervisors; Associate Professor Finex Ndhlovu and Dr. Arvind Iyengar from the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England, New South Wales, Australia. Their instrumental guidance paved the way for this project to be taken from the conceptualisation stage to the public domain. Further, they provided valuable feedback on how this manuscript could be reworked into a worthy publication.
Ethical approval: Prior to data collection, Human Research Ethics clearance was obtained from the University of New England Research Ethics Committee (Approval number: HE21-086) to satisfy any possibility of ethical issues such as confidentiality of information, dissemination of personal details as well as deceiving of the participants. Further, Human Research Ethics approval was also obtained from Fiji National University [Approval number: CHRS 7-20].
Funding: This research was completed with the University of New England International PhD Scholarship funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government’s Research and Training Program.
Citation
Goundar, P.R. (2023), "Language, educational inequalities and epistemic access: crafting alternative pathways for Fiji", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-06-2023-0104
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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