Cooperation, conflict, and complementarity: A study of relationships among organizations involved in mother tongue literacy and pre-primary education in Papua New Guinea

When the national government of Papua New Guinea initiated its national Literacy and Awareness Program in 1989, mother tongue literacy and pre-primary education efforts supported by non-government organizations and several provincial governments were already operating in approximately seventy of the country's 800-plus language groups. The national government's intent was to support and assist these entities who were to retain primary responsibility for their programs. With government support, the nation-wide program expanded rapidly and in 1995, the Department of Education began incorporating children's mother tongue pre-primary classes into the formal education system as the first part of a general restructuring plan.;This dissertation studies the Literacy and Awareness Program and the factors that affected relationships among the government, non-government, and community organizations that have been involved in or affected by the program during its first six years of implementation. Relationships range from cooperation to competition to conflict and are influenced by the socio-historical context in which the mother tongue literacy movement developed, by governmental policies and actions during the years after the program was initiated, and by features of the non-government organizations themselves.;The study asserts that conflict among supporting organizations is a result of their failure to see themselves as complementing one another in terms of their basic motivations, priorities, and methods. A way is proposed to help organizations conceptualize their relationships in terms that enable each entity to remain true to its specific "mission" and to utilize its unique talents more efficiently in pursuit of the common goal of integral human development in Papua New Guinea.