A qualitative evaluation of the lower secondary SEMP science curriculum of Trinidad and Tobago
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Date
2009
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine
Abstract
Timely and systemic evaluations of educational innovations continue to be two challenges faced by education reforms in Trinidad and Tobago (TandT). This paper is, therefore, an attempt to counter this pattern by placing in the public domain a report of a small-scale evaluation of 24 randomly selected science teachers in TandT. A focus group interviewing technique was used to evaluate the teachers' stages of concerns and their levels of use of the new lower secondary science curriculum-a curriculum initiative launched in 2002. Using the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) and grounded theory as the theoretical frameworks, an analysis of the focus group interviews of the science teachers revealed that these teachers had very high levels of concerns with the innovation, that is, they had thought critically about some of the major issues surrounding the innovation, but had very low levels of use. However, because the study involved a small sample of science teachers' views (n = 24), the findings should, at most, be considered exploratory, and therefore must be subjected to later verification using some quantitative or mixed methods curriculum evaluation techniques on more samples of science teachers
Description
Table of Contents
Keywords
Secondary school teachers, Science teachers, Lower secondary schools, Teacher attitudes, Secondary school curriculum, Secondary school science, Curriculum evaluation, Curriculum implementation, Trinidad and Tobago
Citation
Barrow, D., and De Lisle, J. (2009). A qualitative evaluation of the lower secondary SEMP science curriculum of Trinidad and Tobago. Caribbean Curriculum, 16(2), 73-97