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The growing presence and impact of predominantly female online influencers suggests the proliferation of a cultural phenomenon that characterizes the social aspects of our digital lives. Working with the notion of gender and maker literacies, this paper shines light on newer forms of making practices by looking at influencer cultures of five popular online social media platforms. Situating the research in a Caribbean context, this paper examines the "influencer culture" by looking at the platformized literacy practices of four Caribbean female influencers and using the concepts of literacy sponsorship and creolization as lenses through which to view the interrelationships and accompanying practices between the influencers and their local and global followers. The paper argues that social media platforms are strategically curated digital-maker spaces that influencers use to shift and change literacy practices and perspectives related to gender, language, and culture. Findings from this qualitative study suggest that these influencers' sponsorship of creolized literacies is reflected in their power to enact social change and transformation through advocacy, consciousness, and community-building. The paper concludes by considering the potential for such social actors and their digital-making practices to influence our contemporary global sociocultural and educational landscapes.

This paper illustrates the mutually constitutive processes of race and neoliberalism in the labour market navigation and integration for Black Caribbean and South/Southeast Asian international student graduates in Canada. The data was gathered from recent international students and key informants in Canada's immigration policy circle using semi-structured interviews. The paper reveals that international student graduates (ISGs) are constrained to seek out precarious and low-skilled forms of employment and participate in a labour market that profits from cheap, exploitable flexible labour. Participants in areas outside the populous Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are perceived as contingent workers. The paper concludes with an argument for centering both race and neoliberalism in future empirical studies of ISG labour market integration.

This paper considers the widening access and participation agenda, its implications for higher education institutions (HEIs) and contends that it must be underpinned by strategic measurement and monitoring. Access is viewed through the following lenses: (i) supporting participation, and (ii) facilitating equity. Using mixed methods, the paper draws on data from The University of the West Indies (UWI) and provides examples from key plans and initiatives over 20 years to showcase how the UWI has increased access. Concurrently, the need for more nuanced and complex datasets to assess the extent of equity is highlighted with metrics drawn from the "Times Higher Education University Impact Ranking." The authors argue that the strategic use and management of data can promote public accountability associated with access and boost institutional reputation. However, universities will have to be innovative and accelerate measures to survive/thrive in the post-pandemic environment by identifying their institutional scope and "system of interest" in widening access.

To ensure its partners have the capacity to implement gender responsive projects, COL introduced an online training programme on gender equality and women's empowerment. This paper reports the methodology and results in measuring the efficacy of this online training at individual and organisational levels. The ability of individuals and organisations to plan and implement transformative actions with a gender perspective require adequate knowledge, skills and a change in attitudes. Given this need, the commonly used Knowledge, Attitude, Skills (KAS) model was used to measure the efficacy of this online training at individual and organisational levels by defining different dimensions of capacities with three learning domains -- Cognitive, Affective, Psychomotor (Bloom's Taxonomy). The baseline and the end line of KAS at the individual level on the six core gender capacities was established for comparison. Two questionnaires were designed to assess the learning achievements of the participants and to measure the efficacy of the training. An analysis of the study registers a clear trend of positive outcomes at the individual level regarding improved knowledge, attitudes and skills on gender equality that could be applied in their work. Furthermore, the paper reports that the organisations demonstrate an enabling environment for more gender equal policies, structures and practices and proposes ways to convert the success of this training by integrating it into the broader gender equality strategy of these organisations.

This paper uses a Cultural Political Economy (CPE) framework to apply CPE's concept of the "economic imaginary" to the educational policy landscape. We consider the Caribbean Community's (CARICOM) regional education policy space and the focus on Human Resource Development to examine how what we call "educational imaginaries" develop and evolve as a product of intersecting interests, power hierarchies, discourses, and material realities. This paper draws from education policy documents developed by formal regional governance bodies within CARICOM between 1993 and 2021. Using CPE's four selectivities (discursive, structural, agential, and technological) to examine the construction of the CARICOM educational imaginary, this paper ultimately demonstrates how CARICOM responds to global hierarchies as a regional entity.

History has shown that despite favourable changes in policy and perception, undesirable or ineffective educational practices in the Caribbean have remained largely unchanged, or superficially or inadequately changed. It has also shown that high stakes summative assessment wields considerable influence on the content to which students are exposed and the teaching and assessment methodologies used in the classroom through the widespread practice of teaching to the test. It is against this background that this paper purports that the integration of sustainable development competences (SDCs) can be advanced through high stakes assessments by capitalizing on the widespread practice of teaching to the test. By focusing specifically on the school-based assessment (SBAs) component of the summative, high stakes examinations used by the Caribbean Examinations Council, the paper examines how SBAs can be optimized to measure and thereby advance the integration of SDCs. The paper opines that through its allowance for formative assessment, integrated assessment, inquiry-based projects and group work, SBAs are optimal for assessing and furthering SDC development.

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This conceptual paper draws on theoretical insights from the concept of discursive opportunity structure. The paper uses a summative content analysis (a comparison of historical records) to demonstrate how discursive opportunity structures shape the multi-level nature of educational governance, which operates at different scales in different regions. Before the Coronavirus (COVID-19) struck, the post-2008 global recession had begun to give way to the 'gated global,' as nations were retreating towards closed regionalism and trans-regionalism as evidenced by an uptick in regional trading agreements (RTAs). This implies that globalisation is metamorphosing as global responsibilities are transferred to the regional level. This paper will use the 15 Member grouping, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), as an example of how political opportunities at the regional level are currently molding national educational agendas. It draws attention to how education is framed horizontally and vertically while illuminating what I term 'discursive educational opportunity structure' in which actors, institutions, and text define, develop, and maintain the dominant discourses. This piece demonstrates how institutional opportunities arise at different levels of the educational system and how their dominant discourses are framed and mobilised by various actors to advance their causes.

The current push for more diverse populations to attend predominantly white institutions frequently overlooks the political nuances of racial and ethnic identity in higher education. When there is a push for Black students, who are they talking about? Do they want African American students, Black Caribbean students, or Black African students? Grouping students together in their diasporic group can result in identity confusion. Not every Black student is African American, and assuming such displays the invisibility of other Black ethnicities and encourages the disillusion of the Black community. This paper will identify student development theories, apply those to the related literature on the subject matter, and eventually develop conclusions that disprove the monolithic nature of Black student support. Understanding the different ethnic identities and their group relations within the Black community can improve policies, procedures, and overall campus climate regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion.

COVID-19 caught the world off-guard, bringing disruption and chaos to all sectors, including education. Within Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the experiences were varied, as were the responses of educational stakeholders at all levels to the crisis of the pandemic. Stakeholders' experiences and responses should inform educational planning and policy, and it is against that backdrop that this research was conducted. This research captures the insights from three webinars sponsored by the Caribbean Centre for Educational Planning, which focused on challenges faced by educational institutions at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of the education system. The transcripts from those webinars were used to construct this paper using a generic qualitative research design. The webinars pulled on the expertise of panelists from across the Caribbean and North America. The findings reveal that most stakeholders were unprepared for the challenges occasioned by COVID-19, which translated into further difficulties adapting to online/blended teaching/learning, psycho-social stresses, heightened economic challenges, and disruptions to examinations. In response to these challenges, among the stakeholders, training was implemented, open communication increased, technical and infrastructural resources were upgraded, health and safety protocols were enforced/reinforced, and domestic and international groups collaborated to bolster access for all students. Lessons learned included the need for collaboration, equity, access, and opportunities, and exercising the courage to radically rethink the region's 'educational futures' by incorporating the shared perspectives of key stakeholders in educational planning and policy making.

This paper revisits the relationship between human capital and income inequality, using an updated data set on human capital inequality and a novel database on earnings inequality. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between these two inequality indicators, but with significant differences across countries regarding the turning point. Skill-biased technological change is found to be an additional force that may blur the relationship between human capital and earnings inequality. Over and above the effect exerted through earnings inequality, the paper shows that human capital inequality has a direct positive effect on income inequality.

This study aims to review the scientific papers on Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) published between 2008 and 2020 and reveal changes in the area. This systematic review was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, a systematic review of papers on ECEfS was conducted according to the specified criteria, and all identified studies were evaluated descriptively. In the second stage, interventional research was evaluated, and their results were reviewed. It was seen that qualitative research methods were mostly preferred in the reviewed studies and most of them were conducted with children. It was determined that the most frequently discussed pillar is environmental. Moreover, the number of interventional research studies is limited. The research findings, it is thought that there is a need for future studies that use interventional, experimental and action research methods, holistically addressing pillars of sustainability

This conceptual paper examines the development of global citizenship education (GCE) by looking at economic regionalism's political economy. First, this paper situates the Caribbean Community's (CARICOM) citizenship education initiatives within the larger scope of global citizenship. Using a historical policy analysis, this article then explores the nexus between economic integration and the construction of citizenship by analysing CARICOM's Human Resource Development (HRD) 2030 Strategy. In examining the HRD 2030 Strategy, it can be seen how the influence of both regional and global needs is being integrated into an initiative to standardise citizenship for an economically competitive Caribbean. Through the lens of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism, we reveal how the Ideal Caribbean Person initiative is a concept of regional citizenship created by regional economic policies and structural institutions. We conclude by arguing that the construction of global citizenship education at the regional level is, therefore, the consolidation of regional norms and their translation into a global context.

The rate of emigration of highly educated people from the Caribbean is one of the highest in the world but little research exists on this phenomenon. This paper helps to fill this gap by focusing on one particular subset of Caribbean skilled emigrants, those working in higher education in the US, including academics and administrators. Drawing on an inductive methodology, and using data from interviews, this interdisciplinary research assesses why these high-skilled Caribbean people emigrate from the region, and the factors that facilitate their immigration to the US. Findings indicate that, ultimately, high skilled emigration of this group is complex, reflecting a compelling interdisciplinary understanding of skilled emigration that has resonance in network, neoclassical human capital, and world systems theories of skilled emigration from the Caribbean.

All in-class teaching in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies was suspended on Friday, 13 March 2020, because of the COVID-19 global health crisis. These restrictions remained for the commencement of the new academic year 2020-2021, which began in September 2020, thus jeopardizing the delivery of course content at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus using the traditional in-class methodology. This paper presents an effective methodology for teaching and assessing laboratory-intensive courses during COVID-19 school restrictions. A mandatory level-two laboratory course of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UWI was utilized as the basis of this study, which aimed at demonstrating that the methodology prevented student performance from degrading below what was experienced in the past five academic years. Feedback questionnaires were also administered to students, highlighting the key benefits they gained.

This paper conducts descriptive quantitative research of the player profile of a set of 808 university professors, and the player profiles that participants consider most suitable for learning when educational gamification is employed in higher education. It also studied the existence of influential variables in the chosen player profiles, including sociological (gender and age) and academic variables (area of knowledge). The results reveal that most professors are mostly explorers, followed by the socializers, and consider these player profiles as the most efficient for achieving learning objectives. There are no gaps based on sociological aspects or knowledge about gamification, but there are gaps based on area of knowledge. It is proposed that universities design training sessions for professors on educational gamification and further research on factors that influence the configuration of their player profile.

School operates as a space/place where girls must navigate and negotiate different aspects of their identities further adding to the complexities of Black girlhood. The scantiness of sociological scholarship surrounding Black girls from the Dutch West Indies elucidates this article's importance. I conducted audio- and video-recorded interviews with nine Afro-Caribbean girls ages 14-17 years old. The interviews were interpreted using an Afro-Caribbean transnational feminist framework which specifically centres the lives of the girls. Findings reveal that Afro-Caribbean girls navigate school by negotiating their decisions about their hair, appearance, and dress to resist heteronormative ideas in Sint Maarten. This paper is a part of a larger project where I examined how Afro-Caribbean girls from the island of Sint Maarten conceptualise what it means to be a girl and to understand how they narrate, navigate, and negotiate their girlhood experiences.

This paper uses data mining from a French project management MOOC to study learners' performance (i.e., grades and persistence) based on a series of variables: age, educational background, socio-professional status, geographical area, gender, self- versus mandatory-enrollment, and learning intentions. Unlike most studies in this area, we focus on learners from the French-speaking world: France and French-speaking European countries, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Central and West Africa. Results show that the largest gaps in MOOC achievements occur between 1) learners from partner institutions versus self-enrolled learners 2) learners from European countries versus low- and middle-income countries, and 3) learners who are professionally active versus inactive learners (i.e., with available time). Finally, we used the CHAID data-mining method to analyze the main characteristics and discriminant factors of MOOC learner performance and dropout.

Although academic discussions of whiteness in music education have been prevalent for over a decade, critical examinations of whiteness in world music education have been disproportionately lacking. One specific world music ensemble that warrants examination is the steelband within American schools. The steelpan was introduced in the United States in the 1940s-1950s, and currently there are over 750 known school steelbands in the US. Many of these school ensembles have unintentionally distanced themselves from West Indian community ensembles and AfroTrinidadian traditions. In this paper, I explore the "whitening" of American steelband through ethnographic research conducted as a participant-observer. Through analysis of fieldnotes, interviews with participants, and current steelband resources, I examine approaches to pedagogy, membership, and performance. The article concludes with implications and recommendations for US-based steelpan ensemble directors and other world music ensemble directors.