The papers in this special issue of the Caribbean Journal of Education represent the major papers delivered at a symposium held in Barbados in 1985. This symposium, entitled The Professional Preparation and Develop­ment of Educational Administrators in Developing Areas, was a joint ven­ture of the Caribbean Society of Educational Administrators (CARSEA, BARBADOS), the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration (CCEA) and the Faculty of Education of the Cave Hill Campus of the Univer­sity of the West Indies. 
One fall day in 1982, Earle Newton and David Marshall met with Robin Farquhar, then president of the CCEA, over lunch at the staff club of the University of Manitoba to discuss an idea we had. At the time David was an associate professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba, struggling to create a special programme in educational adminis­tration for students from developing areas, and Earle, senior lecturer in educa­tional administration at Cave Hill, was on leave pursuing research in the area of educational administration in developing areas. Both of us had done inter­national searches on the topic, and we had reached the same conclusion: we desperately needed some ·contemporary attention· to the subject of educa­tional administration in developing areas, and we needed this attention in written fonn, so it could be used for future discussion and instructional pur­poses. Our solution to this lacuna in the area was to propose an internation­al symposium and seek the support of the CCEA.