No-one can deny the significance of quality early childhood education in our increasingly global and technological society. Among the many issues involved in providing the highest quality developmental experiences for young children is the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in early childhood education. This paper explores how ICT can be used in early childhood education. After an overview of the status of early childhood education internationally and in Jamaica, developmentally appropriate practices for using ICT in early childhood are described.

With the introduction of the Revised Primary Curriculum in the late 1990s, a child centred, integrated, holistic curriculum was adopted at the lower primary level with a more subject-based approach at the upper levels. A constructivist pedagogical approach was en­dorsed.

The International Charter of Physical Education and Sport adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul­tural Organization (UNESCO), at its twentieth session in Paris in November 1978, states in its first Article: 
 

This exploratory study describes the instructional strategies and related activities a first grade teacher and I used to promote engagements with an informational text in one rural Jamaican primary school. Some of the instructional strategies and activities which we used included making connections as a bridge from the known to the unknown, read-alouds, echo and choral readings to increase content knowledge and expand vocabulary and look-backs to gather and write important facts about bananas.

Doctoral study is a complex process, and the critical and overarching factor is the quality of supervision. The article presents reflections on a doctoral supervision from the perspective of the supervisee.

Without a cure for HIV/ AIDS, the present generation not yet infected must be prevented from contracting the disease. Those unsure of their status must acknowledge their risk level and, where necessary, get tested so that they do not unintentionally infect others. Those already infected must practise respon­sible sexual behaviour to avoid infecting others, to avoid re-infecting them­selves, and to improve the quality of their lives.

National, regional and international examinations are usually aimed at assess­ing knowledge and skills of candidates/ students guided by the delimitations of content and objectives specified in a syllabus, curriculum and/ or course outline. These tools of assessment take various forms and modes and are sub­ject to a range of interpretations of achievement or non-achievement. In order to determine levels of achievement, these assessment tools are often accompanied by descriptive rubrics which assist in assigning a fair grade to the items responded to in the examination.

Education should change the way that we live. The planetary crisis--of cli­mate change, depleted energy resources, air and water pollution, species ex­tinction, violence, poverty, HIV/ AIDS etc-requires a radical shift from education that is narrowly confined to the classroom to one that places stu­dents in community. Education that is solely an indoor activity, using Orr's term (2006) produces graduates who often know much about their world but do not act to change their world.

Objective knowledge framed by formal theory has long enjoyed pride of place in academic publications. Here the authority of text is privileged over the au­thority of lived experience. Other types of knowledge are excluded from writ­ten discourse because they are seen as inappropriate or lacking in academic rigour. Thus, formal academic writing often seems removed from the real world.