This thesis aims to privilege the voices of principals and teachers by interrogating their experiences and perceptions of the new phenomenon of school inspection (SI) in primary schools in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). The study also investigates how SI helps in understanding teaching and learning and leadership and management. Additionally, it looks at the implementation of the inspection recommendations and the challenges surrounding their implementation. I did this study out of an intrinsic interest in SI. It was a qualitative case study within the constructivist/interpretive paradigm. It utilised one-on-one interviews, documents, and observations to gather data. I used a postcolonial framework, a review of literature on SI, teaching and learning, leadership and management, and Ehren and Visscher’s theory of SI, as the main means, to analyse the findings. The study finds that accountability and school improvement are among the main experiences and perceptions of SI. There is unanimous agreement with its implementation, although there was some dissatisfaction with the top-down manner in which policymakers implemented it. SI has the potential to lead to school improvement, however, there are instances in which it results in negative unintended consequences on school staff. SI reveals leadership and management in primary schools is ineffective for the most part. However, there is some degree of evidence that leadership and management can make a difference in primary schools operating in challenging circumstances. Traditional teacher-centred methods dominate the teaching and learning process. The study also reveals that the implementation of inspection recommendations is limited to those that are easy to implement. Challenges, mainly from within the schools, exist to implementing those recommendations that are likely to have the greatest impact on change. There are ways in which SI may be enacted to fit the context of primary schools in SVG.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:698308 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | James, Godwin E. |
| Contributors | Neckles, Themesa Y. |
| Publisher | University of Sheffield |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/15754/ |
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