The Handbook on Caribbean Education
Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Information Age Publishing Inc.
Abstract
In the first two sections, the contributors focus on the teaching and learning process: the relationship between teacher and student. This is, of course, “where the rubber meets the road.” Thomas, Roofe, Bailey, and Bennett (Chapter 5) bemoan the unnecessarily massive focus on high stakes testing in Jamaican schools. Bissessar, in Chapter 2, compares professional development for teachers in Grenada, Guyana, and St. Eustatius. One recommendation from Bissessar’s work is that teachers should play a larger role in determining topics for professional development sessions. This recommendation is consistent with my own experience teaching in Colombia and in Jamaica, where my students, many who are schoolteachers, complain about not having a significant role in determining the content of the professional development in which they are required to participate. In the only chapter in the volume focused on early childhood education (Chapter 8)—an extremely important area—Kinkead-Clark offers a status report on early childhood education in the Caribbean, stressing the need for such programs to be more culturally responsive—a topic to which I shall return. In a very different type of discussion, Morrison and Steele, in Chapter 9, explore childrearing practices of Jamaican immigrants in the United States. In Section III, the focus shifts to the all-important relationship between the culture of each nation state and the education that evolves therefrom. Bowe and Johnson (Chapter 11) describe a collaboration with the Bahamian Ministry of Education aimed at better understanding parental involvement, including parental interest in the education of their children. In a powerful chapter (Chapter 12), Dennis urges the reader to reflect on the significance of taking advantage of local knowledge practices to utilize and internalize current information in Trinidad and Tobago. She calls on the reader to acknowledge what the Akan people of Ghana term, Sankofa, that speaks to the significance of going back to learn from the past to more effectively move into the future. (The direct translation is go back and get it.) In Section IV, the authors focus on the challenges and potential for STEM education in the various countries highlighted therein. Jackman-Ryan, in Chapter 18, notes that while girls do better in STEM areas in high schools in Trinidad and Tobago, due in part to their low self-esteem, they continue to be underrepresented in Trinidadian and Tobagoan tertiary institutions. The author cites several causes for this truism, including youth being socialized into gendered roles from early childhood. The foci of the first four sections each speak to current circumstances in one or more countries in this region of the world. In the fifth and final section, the focus shifts, appropriately so, to reflections on what implications the past and the present suggest for the future of education in this part of the world. The contributors look at several key issues including the implications of global citizenship in the Caribbean. Allert (Chapter 21) cautions Caribbean leaders to be aware of the disconnect between the educational leadership in these countries and the increasing emphasis— even prior to COVID-19—on online learning. Endicott, in Chapter 23, addresses the need to dismantle neoliberalism in Haiti. Jules and Arnold (Chapter 24) explore how education influences notions of Caribbean citizenship. In Chapter 25, Pluim and Stewart urge us to rethink current European-centered notions of global citizenship, taking into consideration geographical context, culture and life experiences. In Chapter 26, McIntyre-McCullough, Seupersad, and Warmington-Granston stress the importance of one’s native language in instruction. This conception of global citizenship, as it is presently constructed, the authors would suggest, encapsulates White supremacy and White privilege, exacerbating obstacles to development in the Caribbean.
Description
Eleanor J. Blair and Kenneth A. Williams, Editors
Foreword by Kofi Lomotey
Table of Contents
Keywords
Caribbean education, teaching and learning, professional development