There is growing interest in the professional development and preparation of educational managers. Previous activities in the Caribbean like the 1982 Jamaica workshop and the 1978 Commonwealth Secretariat Workshop show that this interest is neither spontaneous nor particularly, new. Similarly in Canada, we have had graduate programmes in educational administration, summer workshops, and research projects on the topic for over 20 years.

Governments in the so-called developing countries are increasingly coming to believe in the desirability of preparation or training for adminis­trators, including educational administrators. They have been receiving assistance from international organizations such as UNESCO, the Common­wealth Secretariat, the University Council for Educational Administration, and the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration, in the training of actual and potential administrators in their countries.

The education sector is integrally related and profoundly bound to politics, social stratification, culture and the economy. This is a generalization that could be applied to education wherever it is found. The fulcrum of the interplay of these forces resides finnly in educational administration. Through educational administration these interlocking factors fashion and shape the educational system.

This paper starts from a fundamental premise and a defined analytical perspective, implying a concrete intellectual commitment. It starts from the premise that it is only possible to examine the theme "education and dependence" adequately within the context of the global social process in which dependence is exerted and education is practised. This premise implies an understanding of the power of reciprocal limitation between education and society in the context of the power of reciprocal limitation between dependent society and dominant society.

The notion of the "Caribbean at the Crossroads and Its Implications for Education" is one that has exercised and excited the minds of policy makers in this region for a long time. 

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. 

In the six years (1966-1972) the Bernard Van Leer Foundation funded the Project for Early Childhood Education (PECE) in Jamaica, with a view, inter alia, to: (i) upgrading the teaching competence of Basic School teachers through in-service training, (ii) developing, experimentally, instructional materials for use in the programme. Their concern was that no hindrances to a child's development occur as a result of con­tinued presence in an impoverished environ­ment, and furthermore, that where children are forced for socio-economic reasons to live in such a context, an attempt at compen­satio

Measurement problems pervade most data obtained on questionnaires. One important class of problems seems to reside in the nature of measurement, and may be identified through a study of a definition of measure­ment. For the purposes of this paper a useful definition has been stated by Caws [3, p.5].

In the last two years there has been a signi­ficant increase in the provision at the Univer­sity of the West Indies for the training of graduate teachers to teach in secondary schools in the Caribbean. The schools in which these teachers will teach vary from the older type grammar school, to the newer secondary schools, whether called Junior Secondary, Comprehensive or Multilateral.

In Trinidad and Tobago, exposure to the structure of English through written materials has been of special significance, for this has been the chief means by which the language has been learnt. Opportunities for speaking Internationally Acceptable English (I.A.E.) have always been few, and the barriers to successful English language learning have been formidable. In fact, one must accept as true the statement that a high percentage of our language learners hear and attempt to speak I.A.E. in the classroom only, and even then, not during every class.