Based on data from a wider study of the perceptions of principals, teachers, and school librarians concerning the school librarian's role in Jamaican public secondary schools, this paper focuses on the teachers' and librarians' responses to two research questions in that study: (1) What do teachers perceive to be the role of a school librarian? (2) What do school librarians perceive to be the role of a school librarian?

Drawing on evidence from research that adopted a qualitative case study design and used grounded theory methods of data analysis, this paper explores social justice as a powerful influence on how four selected high school principals in Jamaica defined, interpreted, and enacted school leadership in their individual school contexts. It discusses the main components that characterized the principals' social justice perspective: a caring disposition; an emphasis on building social capital; a belief in students' capacities to succeed; and a focus on reducing inequities.

This issue of the Caribbean Journal of Education examines a diverse set of topics ranging from the perspectives of principals as leaders, the role of the school librarian in Jamaican secondary schools, the external assessment of student teaching, and the migration of teachers from Jamaica and other developing countries.

In this article, the author draws on the findings of a previous study of the history of writing instruction at UWI, Mona, to argue that academics' attitudes to writing and its instruction throughout most of the six-decade history of the institution suggest that large numbers of "content" faculty may not readily address the component of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) which requires them to be directly involved in students' writing development.

In this paper a cross-disciplinary WAC curricular and pedagogical approach is proposed and the challenges and opportunities presented by an interdisciplinary WAC approach investigated. Conceptual research methods were used and a critical education theoretical perspective pressed into service to navigate the issues. It is shown that generally, traditional academic and organizational orthodoxies do not allow for curricular transformation, hence the need for a supportive institutional culture. The need for a learner-centred higher education landscape is therefore underscored.

This paper will discuss an activist approach made at the University of the West Indies, Mona to implement a 'Speaking Across the Curriculum' (SAC) Programme, as a response to the University's Strategic Plan of 2007-2012. Although it has long been agreed on that the University needs a programme instilled in its curricula that would ensure the production of graduates that are competent and effective oral communicators, to date no such programme exists.

Despite the fact that mathematics is compulsory at the secondary level in Jamaica and is required for entry into tertiary institutions and certain jobs, many of our students are overwhelmed by their perception of the impenetrability of the complex world of mathematics. Furthermore, the fundamental value of learning mathematics as a means of developing the higher order skills of reasoning and critical thinking escapes many. 

This study was designed to investigate how an intervention of purposefully designed activities would affect the writing performance of a group of ten female grade eleven students at a non-traditional high school in Jamaica. The study examined the difficulties that the students encountered when writing and explored the factors that contributed to the students' writing difficulties. Data were collected from interviews, participant observations, students' journals and students' written work. 

Writing about a scientific topic gives the instructor an excellent way to measure student comprehension. In writing tasks, the instructor can also observe student thinking abilities of a scientific nature. Yet it is common that physics curricula do not explicitly use writing tasks in their assessment schemes, even though almost all physicists implicitly judge student writing in problem solving and problem solving is the "gold standard" for student achievement in physics.