Education Issues in Creole and Creole-Influenced Vernacular Contexts

Ian Robertson is retired Professor of Linguistics at the St Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. He has worked as Linguist and Language Educator both at the University of Guyana and the University of the West Indies. The major focus of his research and publication has been on English Language Education with a focus on Creole sociolinguistic circumstances as well as in Creole Language description, documentation and history. He is responsible for the discovery of the last thirty or so speakers of Berbice Dutch- a Creole language which had remained unknown to academia up to his 1975 discovery. His academic production includes several academic publications, contribution to a textbook series for teaching English to secondary school students in the Caribbean, and a number of video documentaries of various sociolinguistic situations in Guyana and Suriname. He served as consultant on language education policy for three countries in the Eastern Caribbean and for Trinidad and Tobago. He has also had a seminal input into the development of programmes that seek to integrate linguistics into language education in the region and was part of a team that produced an English language textbook series for students in Caribbean secondary schools. He has been directly involved in examination syllabus development for the Examinations of the Caribbean Examinations Council. Prof Robertson is a former Head of the English Department at the University of Guyana, Guyana, and of the Department of Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education of the UWI, Trinidad and Tobago. He has also served as Deputy Dean (Student Affairs) and then as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the St Augustine campus. Hazel Simmons-McDonald is Professor of Applied Linguistics and, since 2007. Pro-Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies Open Campus, Trinidad and Tobago. Prior to that, she served as Head of the Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature, Deputy Dean of Outreach and later of Planning and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. Her research interests include second language acquisition, the development of literacy by Creole and Creole Influenced Vernacular speakers, and vernacular literacy. Her publications include articles and book chapters on language acquisition, language education policy, literacy development, language and culture and more recently, open and distance learning. She has published several English language texts for use at secondary and tertiary levels.