This study examines the evolution of preschool, primary and secondary education in Belize for the period 1816 to 1994 in relation to access, quality, effectiveness and efficiency in the use of available resources. Qualitative analysis of documentary evidence and interviews with 40 Belizean educators was combined with quantitative analysis of enrollment and other statistics. The data collected identified the major development milestones including compulsory attendance for primary students, the Primary School Leaving Certificate, the Belize National Selection examination for primary students, the Caribbean Examination Council examinations for secondary students and local teacher training. Major continuing issues include: lack of proper planning, inadequate human and financial resources, shortages of qualified teachers, high dropout rates, irrelevant curricula, and imbalance between rural and urban educational opportunity. This study concludes that although preschool, primary and secondary education has expanded, much still remains to be done to provide equal access, and improve its quality, effectiveness and efficiency.

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Before 1968, Blue Creek Village was comprised of Mayan Indians living their traditional way of life, growing corn, beans, and rice, caring for their homes and family. The years following 1968, Blue Creek Village began to see development and change. Between the years of 1968-1971, a road, Catholic Church and an ecotourism site were built, the International Zoological Expedition (IZE). Three years later a primary school was built (1974-75) and finally in 1978 an agriculture building was built. Only 9% of the people living in Blue Creek Village had no formal schooling. Two generations of the Blue Creek Village people experienced and were affected by developmental changes occurring in their community.During the summer of 1999 (May 13 - August 8), I studied the Mayan Indians to determine how ecotourism, education, and gender influence the cash income earned by the Mayan people and how education is influenced by ecotourism, gender, age, individual, family/generational or community decisions. Blue Creek Village, Belize, was chosen as the site of study because Mayan Indians lived a traditional lifestyle and it was adjacent to an ecotourism location, the IZE Blue Creek Rainforest Preserve in the Maya Mountains. Ethnographic interviews and participant observations were used to obtain responses and demographic data of the local Mayan people. From these responses the statistical analysis revealed that education does influence the cash income of the local Mayan people in Blue Creek Village. Prior to the IZE Rainforest Preserve, the Mayan men's only source of cash income was through rice production, and women were unable to earn cash. The cash earned from the visiting tourists assisted families by providing cash income to pay for an education for their children. / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

The objective of this study was to determine vocational education's potential contribution to the future economic development of Belize. To achieve this objective, a panel of experts was involved in the formulation of statements and the determination of each statement's value as a contributor to future economic development. The design of the study included use of the Delphi technique. A panel of experts was chosen with four selected from each of four groups: (a) government (public service), (b) non-governmental organizations, (c) entrepreneurship and small business development, and (d) manufacturing and export-oriented production. Each of the experts was asked to identify statements that vocational education should emphasize in the future so that it would contribute to future economic development in Belize. Frequency distribution, mean, and variance were calculated for each statement. The criterion to determine whether consensus was achieved was defined as item variance being equal to or less than 0.75 on a 4-point scale. Panel members identified a list of 85 statements of which 71 met the criterion for consensus. The 71 statements on which the panel of experts reached consensus were rank ordered according to their means. The statements on which consensus were not achieved did not fall below the important category; however, the group ratings were widely dispersed. A content analysis of the ranked statements revealed that some statements clustered around common themes. These themes included planning, productivity, linkages, values and work ethics, and program and institutional development. / Ed. D.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) measures assessing social-emotional learning and character development across a broad array of constructs have been developed but lack construct validity. Determining the efficacy of educational interventions requires structurally valid measures which are generalizable across settings, gender, and time. Utilizing recent factor analytic methods, the present study extends validity literature for SEL measures by investigating the structural validity and generalizability of the Social-Emotional and Character Development Scale (SECDS) with a large sample of children from schools in Belize (n = 1877, ages 8 to13). The SECDS exhibited structural and generalizability evidence of construct validity when examined under exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). While a higher order confirmatory factor structure with six secondary factors provided acceptable fit, the ESEM six-factor structure provided both substantive and methodological advantages. The ESEM structural model situates the SECDS into the larger body of SEL literature while also exhibiting generalizability evidence over both gender and time.