A REGIONAL EDUCATOR says some in the profession must let go of entrenched but useless methodologies that are paralysing educational systems.
Speaking at an Eastern Caribbean Joint Board of Teacher Education annual meeting yesterday, director of the School of Education, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Professor Joel Warrican, said some of those included:
• Common Entrance examinations;
• a stratified secondary school system that led to the marginalisation of students allocated to “bad” schools and labelled accordingly;
• the secondary education exit examinations where more than half of the students writing CSEC examinations could not obtain passing grades in five subjects, including English and mathematics;
• teachers teaching in areas for which they were not adequately qualified; and
• no mechanisms that ensured teachers pursued professional development after completing initial teacher education programmes (for example, licensing based on updated qualifications).
“We are [so] accustomed to going with the flow, that we seem to think there is nothing we can do to halt the slide down a road. . . . We, the intellectuals, the thinkers the technocrats, must put aside those shackles and make the decisions that can propel the region forward.
“Some of those decisions will be hard because they may shatter the status quo, but . . . . let us have the courage to make those decisions,” Warrican told attendees in the Shell Conference Suite at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. (SDB Media)
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