Recent comments that the school curriculum of Trinidad and Tobago is “culturally irrelevant” prompted this research project. The research was undertaken through a series of focus group discussions with community artists, curriculum officers and public figures interested in education, to explore the following issues:

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.

In the West Indies today, under the aegis of the Caribbean Examination Council and the various National Curriculum Development Committees, teachers are working to draw up curricula, syllabuses and examinations for several subjects, among them Spanish. Assuming that these syllabuses and examinations must be tailored to accommodate the teaching of Spanish in the various countries of the region, the question arises: what kind of Spanish should we teach? Up to the present no concerted policy has emerged.

The teacher is at the heart of the curriculum and plays an integral role in shaping individuals. As such, the knowledge teachers possess and the strategies they utilize are important considerations in the delivery of the curriculum. This qualitative study reports on the knowledge and usage of context responsive pedagogy (CRP) based on five rural primary school teachers in Jamaica. CRP entails teaching and learning that is contextualized, given the peculiarities of the classroom. Data collection was carried out through interviews and observations.

Words that come to mind in reading this book are global, contextual, innovative, and multidisciplinary. Globalization is typically defined as a set of processes involving interactions and networks within various domains (including the political and the cultural) and involving also “the accelerated movement of goods, services, capital, people and ideas across national borders”(Little and Green, 2009, p. 1).This seems to describe the processes used in the making of this book.

This special section focuses on the evaluation of national curriculum strategies which was commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Jamaica through The UWI Consulting Inc. (see Jennings-Craig et al., 2012). The focal points for the evaluation were Numeracy, Literacy/Language Arts and Spanish in primary schools, and English Language, Mathematics and Modern Languages (Spanish and French) in secondary schools.

Since Jamaica gained its independence, successive governments of the country have implemented various curriculum policy initiatives at both the primary and secondary levels of the education system, aimed at providing increased access and improved quality education for citizens. While many of these initiatives have led to increased access to education in the island, the issue of improved quality education continues to be a challenge.

This collection of articles on education in the English-speaking Caribbean were 'volunteered' by academics at the University of the West Indies to mark its fortieth anniversary. They are arranged in two parts. Part One, 'Concern for a System' comprises three sections in which perspectives are put forward on some of the needs of the education system, the societal base and the curriculum change process. In Part Two 'Disciplinary Perspectives', contributors examine curriculum issues to do with the teaching of maths and science, technical and vocational education and the liberal arts.

A recent report of a workshop on educational curriculum and remediation held by the Eastern Caribbean Education Reform Project (ECERP), provides an interesting backdrop to language education in the Caribbean and incidentally supports the rationale for this book.

This study presents the findings of a survey of faculty across the disciplines at the University of The Bahamas (UB) regarding the types of writing they assign students in their classes and the value they place on certain aspects of students’ writing when assessing student work. A major goal of the study is to build background knowledge about the state of writing instruction across the disciplines at UB to support the growth of a possible Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiative.