Teacher development in the Caribbean

Abstract

Teacher development became a priority throughout the Caribbean in the 1990’s. This paper seeks to provide background information on experiences and accomplishments in teacher development in the Caribbean, and to identify the challenges faced by the countries of the region and the goals that they adopted in the 1990s. The paper shows that different aspects of teacher development in the Caribbean were brought to the forefront in the 1990s. Innovative actions were concentrated in the areas of pre-service and in-service training, continuing professional development, and teacher evaluation. However, there was little undertaken in the area of teacher supervision. It is also noted that innovative actions were neither universal nor evenly distributed in their occurrence across the region. In addition, because of the recentness of many of the innovations, there was not sufficient time to assess their effectiveness, impact, or long-term sustainability.