Abstract
This chapter examines language curricula and related education policy documents in Trinidad and Tobago using Critical Discourse Studies given that CDS can provide “the tools for addressing the complexity of movement across educational sites, practices and systems in a world where equalities are global in scope” (Rogers, Critical discourse analysis in education, 2nd edn. Routledge, p. 2, 2011). Through critical lenses, this chapter traces the development of the National English Language Arts curricula for lower secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago from conceptualization at the turn of this century, to the writing and enacting of three sets of national documents in 2002, 2008 and 2015. The analytical procedures used for this study were drawn primarily from Fairclough’s (1995) threethree-part model for analysing a communicative event or interaction (the text, the discourse practice, the sociocultural practice), and were further supported by Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics and Genette’s transtextuality model. The analysis highlights the role of education policy documents as ideological constructs, legitimising as well as challenging language education practices with each curriculum revision.
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Notes
- 1.
Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language (TTSL) is the natural sign language of the deaf community of T&T and is often mixed with and/or used alongside American Sign Language (ASL). Deaf children are educated at the Cascade School for the Deaf, Audrey Jeffers School for the Deaf, and the Tobago School for the Deaf and Language Impaired, at the primary level, and, if they are successful at the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA), they may move on to secondary school (cf. Braithwaite 2015; Braithwaite et al. 2011). The documents under review were created to serve the needs of hearing children so this indigenous language is not accounted for in this chapter.
- 2.
Of the approximately 60,000 Venezuelan migrants estimated as coming into Trinidad and Tobago over the past decade or so, 19,000 are legally registered and, of this number, 84% are categorised as asylum seekers and 14% as refugees (Chami & Seemungal 2021; USAID 2020). This has had sociolinguistic and educational linguistic implications for the islands (albeit the majority of migrant children are educated at “child friendly spaces” for bilingual education outside the domain of the public school system), but the focus of this chapter is the bidialectal Trinbagonian learner.
- 3.
An additional sum was provided by the Mico Charity Fund (Campbell 1996)
- 4.
Used mainly for content areas to show integration among the six Language Arts strands.
- 5.
These teachers and curriculum officers vary with each edition; only three writers were consistently there throughout each issue. In the list of teachers outlined on the drafts, however, none of them is from Tobago.
- 6.
A main author here is identified as the Director of Curriculum. The teachers are identified as curriculum content writers.
- 7.
An exonym for the Kalinago indigenous people.
- 8.
A mountain village with a small community of Patois (Trinidadian French Creole) speakers.
- 9.
This label is problematic. It does not describe the linguistic situation in the Caribbean of “an exonormative standard [that] still lingers on while awareness of endonormative standards is gaining ground” (Deuber 2013).
- 10.
“An ambitious program that [called] for Trinidad and Tobago to achieve developed-country status by the year 2020” (Elias & Rojas-Suarez 2006).
- 11.
This was further expanded into a Criteria for Assessment of Qualifications for Teaching at the Secondary Level in Trinidad and Tobago document on the MOE website, the latest update being for January 1, 2019.
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Selvon-Ramkissoon, N. (2024). Critical Discourse Studies and Curriculum Development in Trinidad and Tobago: Exploring Discursive Practices in Education Policy. In: Durgasingh, R., Selvon-Ramkissoon, N. (eds) Caribbean Discourses. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45047-1_4
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