| The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis is a small island state in the Eastern Caribbean that attained full sovereignty from Britain in 1983 after roughly 350 years colonization. During the colonial period, the British system of education was imported to St. Kitts and Nevis and has remained the model on which the nation's current education system is structured. However, since the independence era, the Ministry of Education in St. Kitts and Nevis has worked diligently to reform the nation's school curriculum in order to make education relevant to the goals and priorities of national development as well as to distance itself from the political, economic, and socio-cultural inequities of the colonial past.;Employing qualitative methodology, this dissertation explores 1) the political, economic, and socio-cultural dynamics guiding national curriculum reform efforts since the independence era in St. Kitts and Nevis, and 2) the ways in which national curriculum reforms have responded to legacies of colonial education. Postcolonial theory and criticism, human capital theory, critical discourse analysis, and theories of social reproduction inform this research. Findings highlight the various imperatives that have guided reforms and show that reforms have better responded to the political and economic colonial legacies than to the socio-cultural ones. Ultimately, this dissertation provides the Ministry of Education in St. Kitts and Nevis with a postcolonial assessment of how, to date, national curriculum decisions have aided and/or hampered the overarching goals of the education system. In addition, it contributes to existing work in the field of comparative and international education on small states and education provision. |
