Barriteau (1998, 187) proposes a theoretical framework which, she purports, can be used to examine how the concept of gender and gender systems operate within the cultural, social and political economy of states. She further indicates that a broader intention was to generate a gendered analytical model, which could be applied to studying a wide range of social and economic phenomena inherent in Caribbean and other societies.

Over the last two to three decades there has been heightened awareness on the part of educators and policy makers of the ways in which schooling, through a range of structures and processes, reproduces and reinforces a hierarchical gender order both in schools and in the wider social system. As a result, there has been a burgeoning indigenous discourse which examines gender bias and sex discrimination at all levels of Caribbean education systems. This special issue of the Caribbean Journal of Education on Gender and Education is a further contribution to this project.

The countries of the Anglophone Caribbean wish to have their tertiary education systems play a more significant role in nation building, consistent with a developing consensus on the critical role of tertiary education in processes of national development. However, they are confronted with two problems: the first is their comparatively low levels of tertiary-level enrolment; the second is their comparatively high levels of national debt. The challenges of financing tertiary education are therefore particularly acute in the region.

This paper discusses initial findings on teacher identity as perceived and discussed by six participants: three overseas trained teachers (OTTs), one secondary headteacher, one local authority director, and one senior policy officer in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) who is a qualitative researcher at a prestigious London university. Through systematic reflection, each individual explores the potential gains which accrue to OTTs as part of their teaching experiences in England in order to make sense of their “new” emerging teacher identities.

This paper brings together the experiences of children, teachers, and parents in two very different schools in Jamaica—one primary and one preparatory. The data are taken from two larger qualitative studies. The first, An Exploration of Two Classrooms: Cases in Classroom Management, is a case study of a grade 5 teacher’s classroom management strategies in a government primary school and her interaction with four of her students—selected because they were highly responsive and promised to be information-rich respondents.

In the process of reviewing a course in classroom assessment offered as part of a programme leading to a Diploma in Teaching, the need to reconcile a constructivist-behaviourist tension that was embedded in the course became evident. The tension resulted from the course designers’ effort to replace a course in classroom testing and measurement that was more behaviouristic with one that emphasized a constructivist approach to assessment.

The expressive arts have long been a valued part of the Caribbean culture. In the last two to three decades in particular, there has been growing belief that the arts are integral to the development of personal and national identity. Academics and politicians see the arts as tools for nation building, even if at times the processes needed to develop artistic sensibilities and artistic enterprises are given less attention and financial support than they warrant.

This issue of the Caribbean Journal of Education includes articles that examine a range of issues related to socialization and the lives of teachers and young people, music education, and the design and evaluation of education programmes. It also includes for the first time, abstracts of dissertations completed by students in the School of Education. Publication of abstracts of research conducted by students of the School will be a regular feature of future issues of the Journal.
 

The reception to the teaching of Hindi in Trinidad has been mixed: enthusiasm, indifference, scepticism and resistance. While Hindi is accepted as part of the culture of people of Indian ancestry, it is not generally regarded as a language that merits the same attention afforded to Spanish, which has now been formally declared the “First Foreign Language of Trinidad and Tobago”2 . The promotion of Hindi has been associated with religious and cultural identity and ethnicity.