This study tested the equivalence classification hypothesis, which claims that in learning a second/foreign language ‘new’ sounds are more easily mastered than ‘similar’ ones. Participants included 49 speakers of St Lucian French Creole (SLFC) and St Lucian English Creole (SLEC), all secondary school students studying French as a foreign language, and a control group of 11 Martiniquan French speakers.

This paper examines the speech of Jamaican Creole (JC)-speaking two-year-olds in urban Kingston, with specific reference to interactions using the ‘wh-’ question constructions ‘Whose?’, ‘Where?’, ‘What is X doing’ and their JC equivalents. Of interest here, is a consideration of the range of JC and Standard Jamaican English (SJE) question constructions understood by the children, as well as the forms of the answers provided by them. Findings are that code-mixing of JC and SJE is characteristic of the speech of these children.

In institutions of higher education, faculty members are increasingly being asked to teach their courses online, usually without any prior experience in this environment or any systematic training to teach in this mode. Faculty require professional development activities aimed at equipping them with the key competencies needed to teach in the online environment. Moving professional development activities for faculty from the face-to-face to the online environment has been explored as a way to increase access by making training more convenient to faculty.

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.

The Caribbean Journal of Education (CJE) has been in existence for  35 years and during that period has published several articles which both directly and indirectly report and reflect research, analysis and commentary on the issue of gender as it pertains to various aspects of education. This overview focuses on articles which have explicitly addressed gender, and acknowledges, but does not comment on, the several articles where gender has been included as a category of research and analysis even though it may not have been the major focus. 

This paper highlights works published in the Caribbean Journal of Education (CJE) from literacy and language arts scholars on that special  group  of  islands in the Western  Hemisphere  called the Caribbean. It is a territory that received the first documented European visit in 1492 when Columbus landed in what he named “San Salvador”.

Several articles on the Caribbean language situation and its implications for Caribbean education in general, and the teaching of English in particular, have appeared in the Caribbean Journal of Education during the 35 years of its existence. They reflect recognition of Creoles as real languages and also increasing appreciation of them as symbols of culture and national identity. One manifestation of this is a relatively positive attitude to the use of these vernaculars in the classroom, in one way or another, alongside the co-existent European language.

The Caribbean Journal of Education (CJE) celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. To commemorate this achievement we have produced this special CJE anniversary issue devoted to reflecting on and reviewing the major themes that have recurred over the 35 years of the Journal’s existence. We look back in order to deter mine the future development of the Journal.

The primary goal of teacher preparation programmes is to enable prospective teachers to develop the capacity and capability to support schools in the important mission of developing children and optimizing their learning outcomes. It is often assumed that the “trained” teacher will possess the skills to achieve this goal by the end of the pre-service training experience. This has been a very controversial topic in teacher education literature.

The Jamaican education system is currently on a path of transformation. As outlined in the recommendations of the Task Force on Educational Reform (2004) report, it is envisaged that by 2015 significant progress will be made in student performance and the education system as a whole. One important plank of this process is the decentralization of the education system. With decentralization being implemented in the health sector and in particular the Ministry of Health (MOH) since 1998 and Local Government since 1994, what lessons can be learned from their experiences?