Dissertation Title 1

I have received two very different pieces of solid advice that seem to contradict each other. Firstly, you should choose a dissertation topic early so that all assignments link back to a singular topic and therefore, each class helps you to write your dissertation. On the other hand, your topic will keep changing all of the time depending on what you are studying and especially with the literature review. This is because it will be whittled down.

Therefore, come along with me as I discover what my dissertation topic will be. I think it will be interesting to see where it started vs where it will end. Overall, I know that I need to understand curriculum design as it benefits the Caribbean child.

1 - Glocalising and Re-indigenising K-12 Education using a Cohort Model and Co-created Curricula to Reinvigorate Education in the English Speaking Caribbean. Case Studies: Barbados and Dominica.

Stumbling across the terms "glocalising" and "Re-indiginising" was pretty funny to me. I was explaining that I am not interested in de-colonizing education because we are starting with chaos and trying to make order. I would prefer to start with a clean slate. The slate would be respectful of the pervasive culture and celebrate the beauty of who we are as a community. However, the perspective would be influenced by similar experiences from around the world. Thinking it through, I totally made up both words and then looked them up and realised that they were actually words!

K-12 is easy to type but I really want to develop a school system that begins with childcare at 18 months and continuing all the way to 18 years. However, as I look through previous research on interventions with tutoring, the recommendations post COVID are the same as pre-COVID and that just doesn't seem right. The recommendation on the best age for literacy and numeracy tutoring intervention was the Early Years starting with pre-K and running up to Senior Kindergarten in Canada. That's roughly between the ages of 3 and 6. Yet, the children who were in the early years during COVID, are now in Middle School. To me, even without COVID, middle school is just the hardest time socially. Have you met middle school girls? They are brutal! And middle school boys don't know where their bodies are in space and time. So, I might narrow this down to middle school.

I personally love the cohort model. My masters program hosted my cohort of 21 people from 14 countries. It was truly enriching and my children refer to many of these friends as "Auntie" and "Uncle". One of the things I challenge is that the cohort needs to be comprised of children the same age. Beside a colonial school that was meant to either prepare children for war or factory work, there are few other settings that force us to stick with peers who are the same age with a 12 month variance. That means that the youngest possible age and oldest possible age would at most be 12 months apart. Even in sports there are wider age ranges so that highly athletic but younger children can participate in higher skilled competitions. If, however, we go with a mixed age cohort, then it technically isn't a cohort because they don't begin and end together. While mixed aged cohorts work in post graduate, how would it work in K-12?

Co-created curricula is very interesting to me. I'm very intrigued by the level of autonomy that Educators prefer and how that level of autonomy is impacted by the age and subjects they teach. My hypothesis is that Early Years want the most autonomy and therefore, the most flexible curricula, however, high school subject matter experts want more structured curricula. Thinking about education in the Caribbean, everything starts with the exam and works backwards from there. The common entrance exam that is administered at 11 years of age has a 3-year curriculum beginning around age 8. Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) administers the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) at 16 years old which also has a preceding 3 year curriculum. This replaced the British Ordinary Levels exam. Then we have two years of CXC CAPE which is the Caribbean Advance Proficiency Exam to replace the British Advanced Levels. These are two 1-year curricula that are combined to amount to an associate's degree. How are curricula set if we simply removed the exams all together?

I want to believe that the reason for focusing on the English Speaking Caribbean is obvious. Not only for facilitation, but because the final imposition of education would have come from the British and therefore, these territories adhere to the CXC. I have to take a moment to shout out CXC because for many years, they have been de-colonising education to the best of their ability. When I was in secondary school, yes, we read the "classics" but we also read a lot of Caribbean authors and poets. Our history books were written by Dr. Edward Kamau Brathwaite and our geography books centred on the variety of terrain found throughout the region. We did Caribbean Studies and had long conversations on what it means to be Caribbean. In English we learned to be proud of our dialect while also learning the appropriate use of "The Queen's". This is very different from my parent's experience just one generation prior. But, as I said, to de-colonise is to start with the problem. So while it's better, is it what we need?

That seems to sum up a lot of my inquiry: while it's better, is it what we need? We are trying to improve by looking back, but this world is changing so quickly. We aren't approaching the singularity point, we are living in it. We have no idea what future we need to prepare our children for because we have no idea what these rapid advancements in technology, AI and AGI will do. So, our starting point is wrong. In my opinion, we continue to prepare our children for the past, not the future. We cannot approach revolution with nostalgia. We have to approach it with foresight and courage. Starting with the knowledge of who we are and our place in the world (re-indigenising) is not the same as starting from where our former oppressors left us (de-colonising). So, here is to finding the right starting point and asking better questions.