Although the COVID-19 pandemic has abated, school systems in the Caribbean and beyond are still recovering from the effects of the loss of instructional time in face-to-face settings. Research into how the education system was and continues to be impacted is still emerging and, interestingly enough, Caribbean Curriculum is publishing its first pandemic-related papers in the current volume.  

Nalini Ramsawak-Jodha, Rowena Kalloo, and Sharon Jaggernauth report on a survey of 146 in-service secondary teachers’ experiences and perceptions of emergency remote teaching in Trinidad and Tobago during the period March 2020 to April 2021. Their results highlight the tremendous obstacles and struggles teachers across subject disciplines faced as they attempted to manage their many roles while teaching from home.  While also situating her study during the global pandemic, Therese Ferguson uses a generic qualitative research design to focus on how her research participants experienced teaching and learning a qualitative research course within a university setting at a time when the traditional in-person interactions were restricted. Her findings offer valuable lessons for students and lecturers operating in online classroom environments. Shifting the focus away from the pandemic, Elna Carrington-Blaides and Nadia Laptiste-Francis provide a systematic review of the literature on inclusive education to glean what themes exist in the Caribbean and international literature for developing indicators of inclusive education (IE). This is an important and emerging aspect of IE in the Caribbean as researchers work towards defining the policy space in which IE operates. Grace-Anne Jackman and Sandra Robinson share the results of a survey of graduate language and literacy students enrolled in a Master’s programme to determine the extent of their assessment knowledge and the nature of their assessment competence and practice. Given the prominence of high-stakes examinations in the region, their findings about teachers’ assessment skills have implications for both teachers’ instructional practices and students’ achievement. Finally, Jessica Cunningham and Sabeerah Abdul-Majied use a qualitative case study to investigate teachers’ understandings of differentiated instruction and formative assessment at a primary school in Trinidad. Their findings underscore the need for system-wide commitment to continuing professional development for teachers. 

The papers in this issue provide much-needed insight into the nature of the Caribbean education system from primary to tertiary level using a variety of research methodologies. These are small steps in our collective effort to understand and improve that system so that it enables the region to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Krishna Seunarinesingh

August 2024