This article describes a literacy initiative for basic school children. It is about young children, teachers, and literature books for children in the basic schools in Zone 40, Clarendon, Jamaica. It is a grassroots project involving approximately 60 teachers in 34 basic schools who collectively teach about 2,200 children, 3-6 years of age. The purpose of this initiative was to infuse literature for children and related literacy strategies into a read-aloud programme to promote the literacy development of young children in the zone.

English is the official language in Jamaica as in all the Anglophone Caribbean islands. It is the language of the law courts, the banks, the established church, for example. It is the linguistic badge which one wears when one wants to identify with a certain level of sophistication, of linguistic competence, and of having “arrived” in a highly stratified society. Jamaican Creole, an English-related Creole, is the language of the people. It is the language they use in day-to-day relaxed situations.

This issue of our journal is the first, for some time, to focus on language teaching and learning. Its orientation is toward the teaching of English even though we also look at other foreign languages. By speaking of "other foreign languages'' we are taking a stance about the approach to English teaching in the Jamaican classroom, as in other parts of the region. And this stance is that, at the very least, English can not be regarded as the native language of many of the students.

Using life history inquiry, this study seeks to understand why three ordinary teachers like Nora, Norris, and Bob remained in the teaching profession. This qualitative study was conducted using life history interviews and artifacts to gather data. Through qualitative inquiry and thematic analysis, data were interpreted to gain insight into teachers' lives and their teaching practice. Three factors emerged as recurring themes over the course of this study.

This article attempts to illustrate the use of the Constant Comparative Method (CCM) for organizing as well as analysing qualitative research in a way that the beginning qualitative researcher can understand. The significance of the CCM is that it is not only useful as a method of analysis but is also a critical component of the entire research process. It includes initial categorization, comparison, inductive analysis and finally refinement of data and categories.

In this article curriculum provisions made for the treatment of Jamaican Creole (Mother Tongue) throughout the education system in Jamaica and the views and practices of teachers involved in the delivery of Language Arts throughout that system are investigated.

The article uses action research techniques to explore a recycling initiative to assist teachers to acquire and use instructional materials to improve practice in the mathematics classroom. It shares aspects of my researchjourney into the 'World of Waste' accompanied by my team of pre-service and in-service teacher-participants, in search of mathematics resources. It brings into focus the physical and human resource treasures we unearthed amidst challenges and triumphs, with the Recycling and Resource Centre for Mathematics emerging as a significant find near the end of the journey.

The article provides a brief overview of the context that has led to the emergence of mixed methods research and examines current definitions for this research approach. It examines the philosophical framework for conducting mixed methods research and compares this with those for conducting quantitative and qualitative research. Finally, it presents different mixed methods design possibilities, and discusses some of the methodological implications of these designs, drawing on some of the research being conducted in the School of Education, University of the West Indies, Mona.

This article seeks to examine the unique process of data gathering among a group of socially marginalized individuals, the Obeah men/women, healers and their clients in a selected community in St. Thomas, Jamaica. The broad theoretical framework used for the study is ethnography and so the actual process follows the established rules of this methodology. The Obeah Act of 1898 makes the practice of Obeah illegal and so the research methodology had to take this very important factor into consideration. The data collection process involved three stages of what I termed community insertion.