Caribbean Vision, West Indian Practice - Conflicts of Edutocracy and Elitism in Education Reform - Research Abstract

Oct 15, 2026

This research examines how decades of education reform initiatives in the West Indies have produced limited substantive change in the education system. Using Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA), official public documents are coded manually and electronically with MaxQDA to identify dominant themes. The findings are interpreted through edutocracy and elite theories to show how colonial ideology embedded in inherited educational structures conflicts with progressive, humanist Caribbean education visions, creating deleterious tensions between theory and practice.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

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Pages24

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Abstract

Introduction

Education reform initiatives and lack of substantive change

Colonial persistence, ideology, and elite selection

Caribbean Vision, West Indian Practice: Conflicts of Edutocracy and Elitism in Education Reform Stacy L. Denny, The University of the West Indies Abstract This research seeks to understand the outcome of decades of education reform initiativesin the West Indies. Utilising the Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) method, official public documents were collected through web and catalogue searches. Dominant themes were identified through manual and electronic coding using MaxQDA software. These emergent themes were examined through the lens of the edutocracy and elite theories to provide more in-depth analysis of this research problem. The document analysis constructed a narrative of how colonial ideology embedded within the inherited West Indian educational system runs counter to the progressive and more humanist visions and missions envisaged for present-day Caribbean education, culminating in deleterious conflicts between educational theory and practice. This work therefore concludes that there has been little substantive Caribbean education reform owing to the significant gaps between early twenty-first century, and even earlier drafted education visions, and current education practice Keywords: edutocracy, elite theory, Caribbean education reform, colonialism, ideology Introduction There have been several education reform initiatives in the West Indies over the past few decades, which do not appear to have resulted in any substantive change to the system (Tsang et al., 2002; Jules, 2015; Brissett, 2021) . The West Indies herein refer to the Anglophone CARICOM states (appendix 1) . Research shows that West Indian (WI) governments have taken a piecemeal approach to systemic change, which has not addressed the perpetual challenges in education; namely, poor quality education, high drop-out and repetition rates, high failure rates and outdated curricula (Tsang et al., 2002; Williams, 2012; Hackett, 2004; Fiszbein & Stanton, 2018) . Admittedly, these are severe educational problems, but the real issue, I premise, is the racist, classist and hegemonic principles, values, and ideologies built under the system as a stabilizing force and weaved into the fabric of the colonially inherited WI education structure. I use the term West Indian deliberately to show that education in this region still mimics the colonial model, and so I speak of the WI education system monolithically despite the territories being separate sovereign states. This is because it shares several core identical characteristics in policy and practice across these islands. Denny (2020) highlights these similarities; namely, the largely academic monolingual school system operating in primarily bi/multidialectal WI settings, which is predominantly characterized by high-stakes assessment in English, academism, chalk and talk, text-book-driven curricula, teachercentered approaches and passive learners (p. 2) . For context, most WIs in the Anglophone Caribbean speak a dialect of English, a creolized or decreolized version, but are expected to learn and use solely English in schools based on a mostly implicit language-in-education policy, as this vernacular issue is not treated directly in most official Caribbean education documents (Denny, 2013) . Notably, the practice of high-stakes national assessment at the primary level, known as the Common Entrance across the region, sorts students into prestigious high-achieving and low-achieving secondary schools, while regional secondary exams, delivered by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), result annually in a meagre 0.01% of WI students attaining national government scholarships to overwhelmingly prestigious overseas universities (Denny, 2021) . A major issue this research therefore seeks to address is why after decades of education reforms do these prejudicial practices still exist, so that despite a rhetoric around equity, there appears to be little substantive change in the WI education institutional syst

FAQs

What method does the research use to study education reform in the West Indies?

It uses Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA), collecting official public documents via web and catalogue searches. Dominant themes are identified through manual and electronic coding using MaxQDA.

How does the research explain the limited impact of education reforms?

It argues that colonial ideology embedded in the inherited educational system continues to conflict with progressive, humanist Caribbean education visions. This produces conflicts between educational theory and classroom practice rather than meaningful change.

What central problem does the study aim to address?

It asks why prejudicial practices persist after decades of reforms. The study focuses on the racist, classist, and hegemonic principles, values, and ideologies built into the colonially inherited education structure.

Oct 15, 2026

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