Education in crisis: Re-visiting the "Carnival mentality"

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Date

2008

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine

Abstract

This paper draws on an ethnographic case study of learning/teaching practices in Trinidad Carnival mas'camps. Over the Carnival 2005 season, selected members of the mas' making community shared their perspectives on learning/teaching practices at work in the Carnival mas' camp. I constructed the learning narratives in this article from the field notes, photographs, and biographical interviews. I used these learning narratives to make meaning of the various socio-historical-cultural theories of learning that situate learners in spaces that are sometimes explained using constructs like non-school and non-formal. These learning narratives demonstrate the practices that inform learning, the kind of person the learner becomes, and his/her philosophy of lifelong learning and continuing education. Further, they provide evidence of the value of these spaces, and the kinds of imagined possibilities that exist for Caribbean policy makers whose discourse suggest that they recognize the importance of encouraging non-formal, informal, and indigenous learning systems

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Table of Contents

Keywords

Nonformal education, Case studies, Carnival mas camps, Learning processes, Trinidad and Tobago

Citation

Fournillier, J. (2008). Education in crisis: Re-visiting the "Carnival mentality". In L. Quamina-Aiyejina (Ed.), Reconceptualising the agenda for education in the Caribbean: Proceedings of the 2007 Biennial Cross-Campus Conference in Education, April 23-26, 2007, School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago (pp. 447-458). St. Augustine, Trinidad: School of Education, UWI.