Research on teaching and teacher behaviour has encountered numerous difficulties over the years primarily because of the complex nature of the classroom. Researchers were accused of using very sloppy and hazy variables and critics observed that many of the investigations did not adhere to the logics of scientific enquiry. In response to these observations and criticisms Dunkin and Biddle conducted a thorough analysis of the work of classroom researchers and proposed a model for the study of classroom processes.

This report summarizes the findings of a group of Diploma of Education students (N. 42) who each investigated, using a case-study approach, both a high and low anxiety subject chosen from an examination class in Jamaican secondary schools or tertiary institutions. Subjects were identified from responses to a common instrument, further investigation of pairs of subjects then being carried out on the initiative of each Diploma student.

The paper reports the results of a research study which sought to identify the process of teachers’ planning and their perspectives on some aspects of teaching. The nineteen teachers who formed the sample were interviewed over a period of ten months. It was found that in their planning, teachers’ thoughts were dominated by the search for novel “activities”. The factors which influenced planning were pupils’ ability levels and their preferences for certain activities.

This study explores Jamaican secondary students’ perceptions of the impact of remote instruction on their learning. The arrival of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the shores of Jamaica in March 2020 (declared as such by the World Health Organization in the same month) resulted in a change from traditional face-to-face teaching to a remote modality. The study used convenience sampling to identify 28 urban and rural, male and female, 12-17-year-old secondary students across Jamaica’s 14 parishes. Semi structured questions and one-on-one telephone interviews  were used to collect data.

Proposals to “restructure” the University of the West Indies will be officially implemented with effect from the Ist October, 1984. The stated objective of such restructuring is the need for more Campus autonomy in order that the University may contribute more effectively to the perceived “national needs” of the respective Commonwealth Caribbean territories.
Vice-Chancellor Aston Preston [11] has explained that:

Over the years, literacy education in Jamaica has been plagued by two closely related problems: (1) the absence of a consistent, officially accepted, socio-linguistically based language policy and teaching methodology for transmitting literacy to creole speakers; and (2) the resultant persistently low literacy levels across the population. Creole linguists have repeatedly expressed the view that the native English-based creoles of the English speaking Caribbean significantly affect the transmission/acquisition of Standard English literacy (see Bailey, Carrington, Craig, Stewart).

In an attempt to improve the teaching of Geography at the sixth form level in Jamaica, a curriculum development project was launched by the author. Its central goal was the production by practising teachers of a range of instructional units in which topics in the Advanced Level S yllabus were to be explored through the use of local case studies. This project was modelled off the British “Geography 16-19” Project and gave emphasis to the role of classroom teachers. The participants helped define the project's objectives, but failed to complete the tasks agreed upon.

The Education Administration Project at the School of Education, University of the West Indies, involves the teaching of Education Foundation and Administration courses to education officers and principals of primary and all-age schools. These courses take place in the summer and are continued and followed up in the following year mainly through seminars and visits of lecturers to the principals’ schools.

This paper discusses the need to apply a pedagogical model to the analysis of errors in the target language so as to make accessible to teachers a technique which they themselves can use in their own classrooms to extract objective information about their students’ errors. Such a model was applied to the written responses of 386 high school students in Jamaica to assess the levels of their difficulty with syntax as indicated by the proportions of error types derived from the tasks performed, and to determine the possible sources of the errors.

The Cuban economy is fairly typical of the small tropical, primary producing, import-oriented economies which comprise the majority of the world’s under-developed nations. In terms of national income per head the Cuban economy before the revolution was stagnant rather than poor. Eric Williams [24] states that the national per capita income in 1958 was $500.00 ranking third in Latin America and well above average for third world countries.