Telecollaboration allows for students to develop foreign/second language competences linguistically, culturally, and interculturally. The use of platforms, such as WhatsApp and Zoom, is now more frequently exploited in foreign language education to ensure that a wider cross section of students, including Jamaicans, can develop global competences.…

The Biennial Report presents a selection of UNESCO-UNEVOC's activities during 2014 and 2015. The activities contributed to UNESCO's sectoral priorities and programmatic objectives and assisted Member States to provide equitable, inclusive and quality education and promote lifelong learning for sustainable development. Importantly, the selected…

Against a background of low literacy among many Jamaican children and young adults, the Learn-to-Read-Read-to-Learn @ Your Library was launched by the Jamaica Library Service and the Library and Information Association of Jamaica. The year-long program seeks to develop creative and literate learners through reading, writing and artistic…

A six-year project is planned to assist in improving a skill training system responsive to the Government of Jamaica's (GOJ) economic policies and labor market needs. The project is designed to achieve its objectives by focusing on three components. The Human Employment and Resource Training Trust (HEART) component is concerned with policy…

School curricula reflect the sociocultural values held by society. As such, curricula may adopt: (1) a philosophically humanistic, individual-sensitive orientation, or (2) an economically-driven, social development orientation. This first orientation supports self-realization and prioritizes a broad-based and multidisciplinary school curriculum.…

This study explored alternative approaches to teaching and learning high school mathematics through a fluid approach to professional development utilizing cognitive coaching. Cognitive coaching is the application of specific strategies in a nonjudgmental environment, built around a collaborative, reflective planning conference. The process builds…

Within the past decade, attention in the Commonwealth Caribbean has focused on the implications of broadcasting for development policies. The relationship between Caribbean governments and the broadcast industry has generally been close and cordial as a result of the small size of the countries and the reality of government ownership of a large…

A small-scale, short-term institution strengthening project between the College of the Arts, Science, and Technology (CAST) in Jamaica and the University of Minnesota College of Home Economics focused on the improvement of vocational teacher education in Jamaica. CAST's technical teacher education program currently prepares teachers in the areas…

Noting that early childhood development is the foundation for basic education across the life span, the first chapter of this report discusses the benefits of early interventions for individuals and society and justifies the basis for programs which aim at meeting the basic learning needs of young children. It also suggests several questions which…

The aesthetic preferences of 224 Jamaican children and 558 previously-studied American children are reported in this paper. Both samples of subjects included male and female children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. The age groups studied were 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds and a combined group of children 7-years-old and older. Each…

This paper describes a new, but tried and tested, paradigm in teacher evaluation: the Three Ability Framework (3AF). Previous research has identified three fundamental abilities that faculty implicitly expect to develop in their courses: technical skills, professional competence, and professional attitudes. The 3AF monitors the alignment of the…

This paper presents the results of research into a technique for the measurement of effective teaching that avoids the problems inherent in student evaluations of teacher effectiveness. The method takes as little as 5 minutes to administer and so can be used in-course by the teacher to track his or her teaching effectiveness. It results in a…

This paper presents an alternative means of assessing faculty teaching that can be used by administrators. This method has been derived from in-depth faculty and student interviews, and its criterion of quality has been validated with empirical data through computer sensitivity analysis. The assessment process has been successfully tested in…

This paper presents an alternative to student questionnaires for the evaluation of teaching quality, which is defined as maximizing students' academic attainment and the satisfaction of students and the lecturer with the course. The approach aligns students' and the teacher's expectations for change during the course. Previous research has…

Inplant training has begun to be used as a strategy to improve access and the relevance of training by the Human Employment and Resource Training (HEART) Trust/National Training Agency (NTA) in Jamaica. Inplant training is presented as a viable, efficient, and relevant method of providing induction and upgrading training for industry. In this…