Background: In many classrooms, science textbooks remain a significant tool, functioning in some instances as the de facto curriculum and influencing pedagogical practices. Such conventions are more noticeable in the science classrooms of developing countries, like Jamaica, because of a chronic shortage of specialist science teachers and the…

This study unearthed the prevailing attitudes and perceptions of Caribbean Higher Education Leaders towards online chemistry learning prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and puts forward a case for more formal training in e-leadership for Caribbean Higher Education Chemistry leaders. This is based on the findings of a mixed method study which showed…

Situated within the CID (Communication in the Disciplines) theoretical framework that promotes the focus of communication instruction on the oral genre standards of effectiveness, and employing a transdisciplinary approach, the current study explores science students' attitudes and motivation concerning an oral skills development (OSD)…

The global dominance of the English language has led to intense debates with the emergence of studies of English as a lingua franca. These debates can be positioned along a continuum stretching from those who see the spread of English as a force of good representing progress and those who see it as a destructive force of globalisation. Between…

The Ministry of Education, Youth, and Information (MoEYI) in Jamaica engaged in curriculum reform, producing the National Standards Curriculum (NSC) for Grades 4-9. This paper reports on a content analysis of the Grades 4-6 curriculum to determine the representation of Climate Change (CC) content, pedagogies, and activities for supporting Climate…

The gender gap in post-compulsory science education remains a key concern for educators in many countries. Over the last two decades significant effort has been placed in a number of initiatives aimed not only at raising the profile of science in schools, but also at widening female participation. Despite these initiatives, the rate of female…

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted education provision and access across the globe. One key aspect affected is academic advisement, vital to a student's university experience for enhancing success and engagement. While recognizing disparities between academic advisement and student progression at the University of Technology,…

Globally, science interest in diminishing among students, and as a result the science career field has begun to suffer from a lack of science career aspirations. The issue is especially relevant in developed countries, such as the United States, Japan, and South Korea, because of their policies and efforts to promote science and science education…

Upto now, the knowledge building influence of the fundamental communicative functions during an on-line collaborative learning (OLCL) session, i.e. argumentative, responsive, elicitative, informative and imperative have been mainly based on results from qualitative studies, results that could have been strengthened by quantitative approaches.…

Student engagement and group work are critical to developing competencies, deeper learning, and attributes that align with 21st-century skills. In an increasingly competitive and dynamic workforce, the ability for employees to engage in collaborative workgroups is essential. A new capstone group-work assignment using Online Human Touch (OHT)…

Is empowering peace education primarily about providing individuals with skills to respond to violence they experience and capabilities to enhance their own lives? Or is inspiring social transformation to alter forms of injustice that contribute to violence an equally valid and important dimension of an empowering peace education program? This…

This paper reports on teachers' use of concept mapping as an alternative assessment strategy in advanced level biology classes and its effects on students' cognitive skills on selected biology concepts. Using a mixed methods approach, the study employed a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design involving 156 students and 8 teachers from…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine, from a cross-cultural perspective, students' epistemological patterns of reasoning about socioscientific issues (SSI), and to identify potential interactions of cultural and scientific identity. Mediating factors associated with students' argumentation and discourse about SSI, as well as the…

Most work on threshold concepts has hitherto related to discipline-specific undergraduate education, however, the idea of generic doctoral-level threshold concepts appeared to us to provide a strong and useful framework to support research learning and teaching at the graduate level. The early work regarding research-level threshold concepts is…

Explored in this article are various cultural beliefs against the backdrop of the science syllabus prescribed by the Caribbean Examinations Council. Allowances for different beliefs between Caribbean islands are suggested. (CW)