Samsa and Oddone (1994, 117) state that statisticians need to write to describe, explain, clarify, convince and to publicize information. Unfortunately, students majoring in statistics and other mathematics based disciplines usually avoid courses which require significant levels of writing. Yet, on completion of their degree, they are usually employed in areas which require a significant amount of report writing, both to specialist audiences as well as to audiences that do not necessarily understand the language of this subject area.

The ability to write effectively in biology is a persistent concern in the Department of Life Sciences of the University of the West Indies. Although writing skills, such as spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure, are generally sufficient, content, structure, and coherency fall below an acceptable standard. In this study, we used quantitative methods to determine whether specific writing tasks would lead to a change in biology students' perception of writing in science and the perceived value of and/or willingness to use writing as a component in their science learning.

"Words need love too." 1
"We create ourselves by words. Before we are business people or lawyers or engineers or teachers, we are human beings. Our growth as human beings depends on our capacity to understand and to use language. Writing is a way of growing. No one would argue that being able to write will make you morally better. But it will make you more complex and more interesting-in a word, more human."? 2
"Since written discourse is central to a University Education, the responsibility for the quality of student writing is university-wide." 3 

Since the 20th celebration of the Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, many journals, disciplines, and people are reflecting on the progress towards sustainable development in the last two decades. Although there has been progress on many fronts, the threats to global sustainability are large and growing.

This article speculates that it is possible to over-train teachers, to the extent that there remains little room for creative approaches to teaching and learning in their classrooms. Responding to the pressures imposed on them to deliver a seemingly overwhelming curriculum in schools where the normal teaching day may be subjected to interruptions and lost teaching hours, teachers frequently resort to straight 'chalk and talk' delivery in the interests of time, rather than engaging in a mutually beneficial process of creative discovery and learning with their students.

This paper investigates the challenges dance student teachers encounter in developing their pupils' creativity in dance in secondary schools in Jamaica. This inquiry will consider these challenges from my reflective position as mentor and supervisor to dance teachers in training at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) in Kingston, Jamaica. It draws on direct experiences and observations of six dance student teachers on teaching practicum in urban schools over the past three years.

The new government of Trinidad and Tobago has expressed 'multiculturalism' as a policy thrust, and a way of framing the country's plural population. This article suggests that the education of teachers will be a key to arriving at a society in which the different cultural strands can find expression. But the development of such a curriculum can be problematic, requiring a conceptual framework that shows sensitivity to the country's postcolonial status, including the histories that must be taken into account in locating the different peoples.

This study investigated the instructional assessment practices, techniques, and challenges of science teachers in Barbados with a view to providing baseline data on the state of the art of this important aspect of science teaching. A total of 55 science teachers drawn from 12 out of 22 secondary schools in Barbados constituted the participants in the study. The self report data obtained by a survey questionnaire revealed that teachers use similar instructional assessment practices regardless of sex, teaching experience, professional qualification, or academic qualification.

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.

A profession has been defined as a community of workers whose practice requires a specific body of knowledge and competences acquired through specialized, professional training. Such a group operates within specific codes of behaviour guided by professional literature and legislation (Wise and Leibbrand, 1993; Jackson, 2010). Wise and Leibbrand have expressed the view that, like other professions, teachers learn a specific body of knowledge and develop skills over time through a coherent programme of study.