This study sought to determine the effectiveness of three teaching methods—lecture, demonstration, and blended teaching— on students’ psychomotor performance in brick/block-laying and concreting in Delta State technical colleges. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested. The population of the study was 215 vocational year one students of brick/block-laying and concreting in the six government technical colleges in Delta State. No sampling was done in the study, thus all the 215 brick/block-laying and concreting students in vocational year one were used as sample of the study.

Western Hospitality Institute started in 1988 as a practical (skills) training institution, facilitating students through competency based education and training. The institution’s mandate was to provide training in the discipline areas of hospitality and tourism. As a non-government institution, WHI struggled to have its programmes recognized at the local level, as most of the students who atended WHI at the time did not have the relevant qualifications required to pursue studies in the local government-aided tertiary institutions.

Technical and vocational education has become a strong focus area for Caribbean countries as they seek to advance their social and economic status in the globally competitive market. Given this context, schools in the Caribbean offer technical and vocational education and training (TVET) subjects to students from various examining bodies. This paper looks at how schools in Jamaica are doing in TVET in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations and the leadership and management principles and practices used in administering TVET in selected top performing schools.

This paper presents the development of applied research components linked to a STEM programme in Environmental Sustainability Practices (ESP). The programme is embedded in the competency- based education and training (CBET) model and it anticipates the need for highly educated and trained sustainability practitioners, who will be excellent sustainable development problem solvers.

The buzz word in education today is “STEM”, especially in TVET circles where it appears to be critical in the development of technical minds. It has been argued that “STEM Education atempts to transform the typical teacher-centred classroom by encouraging a curriculum that is driven by problem-solving, discovery, exploratory learning, and requires students to actively engage a situation in order to find its solution” (Fioriello, 2011).

This special edition of the Journal of Education and Development in the Caribbean (JEDIC) is timely since it is published at a time when science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and technical vocational education and training (TVET) are being focused on in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

Lecture Capture Systems such as Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite have become a focal point for administrators and they have quickly become a tangible means of delivering content asynchronously to support student learning outside of the classroom. This action research study discusses the findings and lessons learnt from the first phase of a semester-long pilot of a partially flipped mode of instruction at a tertiary level institution in Trinidad and Tobago.

The aim of this study was to ascertain the root causes of absenteeism among children of the rural poor in one hundred Jamaican primary schools in which absenteeism was most problematic. The research utilized a mixed methods approach and involved transforming qualitative data into quantitative data and generating descriptive statistics. Focus group interviews were utilized to collect data from school and community members and involved 165 children, ranging in age from 7 to 12.

This study presents the perceptions of three beginning teachers about their experiences as they implement the Revised Primary Curriculum at grades one to three in Jamaican classrooms. The study documents the beginning teachers’ views on their ability to interpret and enact the curriculum using knowledge from their teacher training programmes.

The mediocre performance of students in the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC) examinations, particularly in mathematics, raises the question whether private/public tutoring – more popularly termed in Jamaica, extra lessons – can improve academic performance in secondary education. The 2009 Jamaican Survey on Living Conditions revealed that extra lessons are the third highest expense in household education expenditures, after transportation and lunches.