The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which a selected group of parents (mothers) in an under-resourced community in Kingston, Jamaica supported their children in their education. This study is a mixed-method case study involving 24 participants from a women’s organization in a low-income community. All women are mothers living in the inner city. They all have children ranging from age 3 to 24. Twenty-four copies of the questionnaire were first administered to the participants as a structured interview via telephone in 2013 by a graduate research assistant.

In this keynote address, the author shared a case study of an inner‐city girls’ school in Chicago. She discussed the school and community initiatives established to ensure academic, social, and emotional success. With their new model of assessment and academic supports, the school boasts a 100 percent graduation rate.

The School of Education, University of the West Indies, Mona, in collaboration with Operation Save Jamaica, hosted a two-day symposium, “Changing the Landscape of Education within Urban Schools and Communities” in Kingston, Jamaica on October 31 and November 1, 2013. The goals of the symposium were to expose educators to the rugged terrain that many children from inner-city communities encounter and also to facilitate discussions among the participants about some of the challenges and solutions to the critical issues raised by our presenters. Approximately 120 persons attended.

The literature on national school history textbooks suggests overwhelmingly that they represent the major source of information concerning national and international history for most people. They play a significant role in shaping the historical perspectives of those who read them, as well as their perceptions of, and attitudes toward, their own nation and other nations and peoples. By implication, therefore, it may be argued that history textbooks can and do affect international understanding.

The study sought to identify students' competence with two basic linear measurement tasks. The sample comprised 1,920 students in Standards 2, 3, and 4 (ages 8–10 years) in primary schools. Through error analysis of the tasks, responses which characterized the tasks were identified. These formed the bases for the task protocols which were used to score students' work. From the data it became evident that Standard 2 students (8-year-olds) did not have the skills as identified in the curriculum objectives.

Utilizing the Laboratory Structure and Task Analysis Inventory, this study examined the structure and skill level of the tasks in the practical activities prescribed in the revised Integrated Science for Caribbean Schools (ISCS), Books 1 and 2. The results signify that the tasks are highly structured and deductive in approach, with heavy emphasis on low-level skills. Some of the implications of the findings for the acquisition of scientific process skills by the users of the ISCS books and similar integrated science projects are discussed.

Over the past decade, the number of students studying foreign languages at tertiary level in the Caribbean has declined. The general perception among secondary school students is that there is no real need to study to an advanced level the two major foreign languages taught, because they are not essential to social promotion.

The appearance in 1981 of a paper by Sarah Michaels in I which the “topic-associating" style of reporting used by black first-graders in a California school is contrasted with the more highly valued “topic-centred” style of their white classmates, led me to wonder whether these students might be responding to what Dell Hymes (1980) refers to as norms of their respective communities.

The introduction of teaching in the mother tongue, Papiamento, in primary schools in the former Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao is described and evaluated. The introduction of mother tongue teaching is seen by its proponents as a means to facilitate students' learning. At the same time it is meant to strengthen the Curaçaoan cultural identity. Proponents of mother tongue education have not welcomed evaluative studies of mother tongue programmes.