As a concept, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), was never set out didactically nor was it meant to be prescriptive. Instead, over the years, since the start of the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development in 2005, much work has been done across the globe, to create, develop, plan, design, implement, deliver, document, refine, research, and theorize the nature and practice of ESD in local and global contexts.

In Jamaica, there are many sources of data that can provide an evaluation of teachers, students, and schools at the primary level. The NAP assessments of students at grades 3, 4, and 6 focus on academic outcomes in literacy, numeracy and primary level subjects such as science and social studies. The panel inspections conducted by the Ministry of Education and Culture allow for officials of the Ministry of Education to assess some aspects of the management and supervision of a school, as well as the performance of teachers in that school.

It began one Monday evening as I entered the room where I thought I was going to meet the small group of graduate students who had signed up for my course: Introduction to Qualitative Methods in Education. As an educator committed to the use of critical pedagogy, I had planned, among other things, to engage this small group in deep, meaningful and dynamic conversations that would facilitate the development of their individual and collective Voices. Imagine my dismay when I opened the door and found all of fifty-six nervous looking students crammed into the room!

The work of the external examiner has been an integral part of quality monitoring activities of the Jamaican Joint Board of Teacher Education (JBTE) since its inception in the early 1960s. In recent years as the JBTE's approach to quality assessment has changed from one of monitoring to one of quality assurance, so too have the expectations for the role(s) its external examiners are expected to play. As with any attempts at educational and ad­ministrative reform, these changes bring challenges.

This qualitative study explored the practices of Belizean urban, preschool teachers when teaching social and emotional skills (SES). It sought to shed light on their understanding of social and emotional development (SED) with a view to highlighting possibilities for and challenges with improving the teaching of SES at the preschool level. A sample of 6 preschool teachers was interviewed, observed, and asked to provide a self-evaluation reflection on their social and emotional teaching practices.

In this paper I advocate a critical reorientation of the way we think about the practice of teacher education in Jamaica. I suggest this as a strategy for challenging the resilience of traditional, teacher-centred pedagogy in our schools. To make my case I share the findings of a study that used the theoretical discourse of critical pedagogy as a conceptual framework to examine teaching practices in a Jamaican teachers college.

In spite of seeming global indecision regarding the significance of teacher education, the Caribbean Journal of Education (CJE) has provided space for academics to research, discuss and theorize the education of teachers for the last 35 years.

Inside Hillview High School by Hyacinth Evans is an ethnographic case study of a Grade Nine class in an urban Jamaican upgraded high school. The primary focus of the study is to understand the factors that influence the students’ learning and academic achievement. Evans’ interest in this subject stems from her concerns about poor academic outcomes for Jamaican secondary schools, relative to other Caribbean countries, as well as from her concerns about differences in achievement levels between traditional high schools and upgraded high schools in Jamaica.

Knowledge about how Jamaican teachers understand the concept of teacher professionalism is limited. In this qualitative study, 52 final-year student teachers participated in semi-structured interviews and concept mapping exercises designed to explore how they understand teacher professionalism. The analysis revealed that they view professional teachers as those who embody outstanding personal and professional attributes; recognize the complexity and contextual challenges of teaching; and respond to these by connecting the realities of their classrooms with what they have learnt in college.

It was while we were attending the Third Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign in 2007 that the idea of hosting a Qualitative Symposium at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, was conceived. Although as a School of Education we had made much progress in accepting the qualitative approach as an acceptable way to do research, there was still a sense that those who used qualitative methods were operating in isolation.