Re-Visioning Change, Case Studies of Curriculum in School Systems in the Commonwealth Caribbean - Tapa blanda

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Zellynne Jennings is Professor Emerita of the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. She is also a former Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Guyana. She has published widely on curriculum change in the Caribbean and has co-authored two books, including one on Issues and Perspectives on Education in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In 2017 she was awarded the Prime Minister's Medal of Appreciation for Service to Education in Jamaica.

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Introduction

Education in aCrisis of Change: Reflections

Education is not static. It is forever goingthrough a process of change. The description as “process” suggests that changeis “an overlapping series of dynamically complex phenomena” (Fullan 1994,21). Some of these can be anticipated, but others are unpredictable. Theenormity of this statement struck me as I was reflecting on the first versionof this book and working on the revisions. Something unanticipated andunpredicted engulfed the world: the Covid-19 pandemic described by the UnitedNations (2020, 4) as presenting “the greatest test the world hasfaced since the Second World War”. All at once life changed. Countries sealedtheir borders. Air travel was halted, and cities were put on lockdown.Economies plummeted. Curfew hours were instituted, and schools were closed.Life was under siege.

I was particularly struck bythree things. First, that a virus that originated thousands of miles away in adistant continent could so quickly affect a group of countries that in thepsyche of the First World were but grains of sand on a sun-soaked beach! Theinterconnectedness of the world! Globalization, after all, has been describedas “a social process whereby the constraints of space and time on economic,political and cultural arrangements weaken gradually” (Little 1996,427), giving this sense of interconnection. Globalization, however, has alsoresulted in widening the gap between rich and poor countries and between therich and poor within countries. “The world is more unequal today than at anypoint since World War 11”, wrote UNDP (2013, 1). 

This leads to my second point. After protocols wereput in place to deal with the health hazard, it was remarkable how attentionthen turned to the economy. The mantra was “if Covid-19 doesn’t kill you,hunger will”. Research in the Caribbean carried out in April 2020 found that“for households earning less than the minimum wage, a striking 34.3 percent ofrespondents declared that they had gone hungry in the previous week, and justover half stated that they consumed less healthy food. These issues evenpersist, at substantially lower levels, in the higher-income categories” (Mooney and Rosenblatt 2020, 13). In Jamaica, affluent businessmen spent hugesums of money to argue in the media for the airports to be opened, and theengine of the economy wound up again. And so, they were. The tourists came backto enjoy the sand and sea and the virus reared its ugly head even more.

The third thing. After muchado about health issues and the economy, something came to us almost as anafterthought: the schools had been closed! What had been happening to thechildren? They were supposed to be learning online, but Hanuchek and Woesmann (2020) citeinternational studies that showed that the learning progress of students hadsuffered a strong decline during the crisis, especially in schools inlow-income areas. In the Commonwealth Caribbean (CC), however, the concern wasmore about the parents who had to stay home with their children and could notgo to work. It was by no means clear how possible or effective working fromhome was. Again, more thought was on the economy than on the children. Theintegral connection between the two was made clear by Hanuchek and Woesmann(2020, 1), who wrote, “The worldwide school closures in early 2020 led tolosses in learning that will not easily be made up for even if schools quicklyreturn to their prior performance levels. These losses will have lastingeconomic impacts both on the affected students and on each nation.” Thechildren at the greatest disadvantage are those from poor homes where familiesare unable to afford the technology needed for the children to access learningonline. These writers argue that the current students can expect 3 per centlower career earnings in their lifetime if the schools on reopening can returnto their 2019 performance levels. As far as nations were concerned “the impactcould optimistically be 1.5 per cent lower GDP throughout the remainder of thecentury – and proportionately even lower if education systems are slow toreturn to prior levels of performance” (Hanuchek and Woesmann 2020, 6). “Thisis going to be the hardest fall we’ve had maybe in the modern history ofeducation”, wrote Greenberg (2020). 

It is not just the academic aspect of the children’s educationthat we should be concerned about at this time of crisis. Children’s physical,social and emotional development is in jeopardy. School closures mean thatphysical education classes cannot take place. Social distancing protocolsprevent children from playing together as before and learning the social andemotional skills which are so important in their everyday lives as well astheir eventual careers. Children who need it do not have access to guidance andcounselling services and breakfast and lunch programmes offered by the schools.This is a particular disadvantage for those who live under crowded homeconditions where they may be subject to abuse, food shortages and cruelty.There is also the fact that “children’s reliance on online platforms fordistance learning has also increased their risk of exposure to inappropriatecontent and online predators” (United Nations 2020, 3).

We must also think about theparents. The success of out-of-school learning depends on the strength of theirinstructional skills, but they have been thrust into a role for which most havenot been prepared. They need to know mathematics and English and be familiarwith the school’s curriculum so that they can give their children the help theyneed. They need to be able to troubleshoot the technical glitches of onlineaccess to learning. They need to offer guidance to the children, supervisetheir work, keep them occupied while at the same time do their normal everydayactivities. Some of this is not new to parents as they were encouraged toparticipate in their children’s education long before the crisis. Covid-19,however, has thrust them into the limelight through online learning out ofschool – a task with which parents from low-income homes can barely cope. Ifglobalization widened the gap between the rich and poor, the pandemic threatensto deepen the divide even further.

This Book’s Purpose

What is the relevance of all of this to the book?It was striking how the pandemic threw the world into confusion. There was nopast knowledge for reference on how to treat it because there was nothing quitelike it before, not even the Spanish flu of 1918. Even the wearing of facemasks became a contentious issue because of a lack of research to support onechoice rather than the other. We came to recognize the value in being able todraw on evidence from the past to inform present action.

This book presents several case studies of attemptsto introduce change into school systems in the CC which can inform action thatneeds to be taken to address many of the issues that the countries face as theytry to restore normality in the education system post the pandemic. Hanuchekand Woessmann (2020) argue that to address the differences in learning loss ofstudents from high- and low-income backgrounds, individualized instruction isthe best strategy to adopt. There is much that can be learned from the casestudies that deal with a similar problem during the early 1980s. Because ruralchildren often had to help their parents to take goods to the market, they werefrequently absent from school and thus incurred learning loss. The solutiondevised was the use of self-instructional materials that the students couldwork on in their own time under the guidance of the teacher. There is much tobe learned from the Grade 10–11 Programme and Project PRIMER1 on the useof individualized instruction in the Caribbean context.Hanuchek and Woessmann(2020) also emphasize the need for attention to education at the earlychildhood level, especially at this time of crisis, since it is the foundationon which learning at other levels rest. Particular attention, they say, shouldbe given to the disadvantaged students. The case study of the transition frombasic school to primary school (see chapter 8) highlights the issues that mustbe dealt with in schools in impoverished rural areas. One of the issues isencouraging parents’ involvement in the education of their children. Thefindings of this study support those reported in Hoover-Dempsey et al. (2005), which suggested that positiveschool staff attitudes towards students’ families and communities areparticularly important to parental empowerment and involvement.

Several of the case studiesalso address the issues of equity and social justice. There are examples ofinnovations designed to reduce the gap between the rich and poor in schoolsystems and cater to children with learning difficulties. The first chapterelaborates on the goals of the innovations discussed in this book and drawsattention to those that used both traditional and modern technology to addressproblems in the school system. While there is no example from the past that dealswith system-wide use of modern technology in schooling from home, the casestudies show that much of what is being experienced now – inadequate suppliesof laptops or computers, weak technology infrastructure, teachers ill preparedfor the task – are repeats of our past experience in using modern technology inour school systems. In a sense it is like going on a journey “back to thepast”. 

The essence of this book can be summed up thus: “Whenpractitioners are better able to understand the past, chances are that theywill be able to impart greater sensitivity to their plans for change and as aresult improve the probability for success in their programmes. This is aperspective needed in most developing nations today, and it is a positionanchored in the view that the past prefigures the present.”2Through an analysis and discussion of case studiesof curriculum change in school systems in the CC, the author unearths andanalyses the problems experienced with a view to deriving from these somebroader insights into the dynamics of implementing change in Caribbean schools.Ultimately this book is about improving student learning because ifpolicymakers and practitioners become more sensitive to their plans for change,this is more likely to lead to programme success which is normally measured interms of student achievement. The book should also be useful in the trainingprogrammes for teachers, principals and other education stakeholders who needto understand the processes of change as experienced in CC education systems.Hopefully, the book will appeal to a wider range of readers who will findsomething of interest in it. It is also hoped that the book will prove astimulus to further research on curriculum change in the wider Caribbean.