Jamaican Creole in education: Swimming against the tide

Carpenter, Karen; Devonish, Hubert

doi:10.1075/cll.36.07car

In:Creoles in Education: An appraisal of current programs and projects
Edited by Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise and Angela Bartens
[Creole Language Library 36] 2010
► pp. 167–182

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Swimming against the tide

Jamaican Creole in education

Karen Carpenter | The University of the West Indies

Hubert Devonish | The University of the West Indies

Published online: 17 May 2010

https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.36.07car

In implementing its Bilingual Education Project (BEP), involving the use of Jamaican Creole and English, the Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) has sought to meet the criteria set out by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture in Jamaica for teaching in the home language (MOEYC 2001). The Ministry and the general public needed to be convinced that the pilot BEP did not (i) do academic harm to the children involved, (ii) has produced an improvement in the children’s competence in English, and (iii) has produced improved results in the bilingually taught content subjects. This paper is a midstream evaluation of the success indicators, focusing on the children’s performance in standardised tests in both Jamaican and English, and other content subjects. Keywords: bilingual education; creole; English; models; language research; research in education

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