In the Shade of the Immortelle: Individual Agency and Social Capital at Work in Trinidad/Tobago

• In Event: 47.095 - MTCC Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: 47.095-13 - Universal Principles and Practices in Education: Models to Follow or Tyranny?

Abstract

This paper presents findings of an ethnographic case study of the social context in which a private special school in Trinidad/Tobago has thrived for 4 decades. The purpose was to understand the forces that contributed to the school’s success in the face of minimal governmental support. Peters’ (1993) conceptual framework of 3 key dimensions for understanding the provision of disability services in developing nations - ideology, societal structures, and educational practices - provided a flexible frame for conducting interviews with 65 participants, uncounted ethnographic observations, and a review of school and public documents regarding disability services in the society as a whole. Participants included teachers, parents, community advocates, and service providers not directly related to the school.

A constructivist grounded theory analysis Charmaz (2014), produced an overarching finding that, in the absence of systematic public responsibility for individuals with disabilities, such private services thrive by virtue of individual agency based on personal motivation and the activation of social capital and a charity model. Potentially helpful government policies continue to be impeded by their status as “add-ons” to the system and by bureaucratic implementation.

Relating these findings to a global context, the study revealed that key principles imported from Northern societies were welcomed as ideal models of education but conflicted with local traditions, education systems, and economic realities. Specifically, the absence of a legal mandate for state responsibility for education of students with disabilities; the perceived unfeasibility of including such individuals within the mainstream of a deeply stratified, post-colonial education system; the absence of systematic protocols for implementation of a legal mandate; and a reluctance to apply the principle of individual rights in attaining assurances for services. A collectivist rather than individualistic cultural orientation supported a widespread preference for the principle of “human rights” rather than “individual rights”. This perspective contributed to the maintenance of the status quo rather than engagement in adversarial or litigious methods of creating change, as for example, in the USA.

This study elucidates key aspects of the debate regarding the global transfer of Northern educational principles. The impact of UNESCO’s Education for All movement has been critiqued as a form of “international orthodoxy” (Urwick & Elliott, 2010), which calls for inclusion even in settings like India where education is yet “an unattainable dream for millions of children” (Kalyanpur, 2015, p. 64). The complex nature of the dilemma is captured by Artiles et al (2011), who argued that the heart of the problem lies in “globalization and the tensions …between cultural continuity and change” (p.7). The nuances of these tensions are evident in the small but increasing body of research from the Caribbean (Blackman & Conrad, 2017), especially Trinidad/Tobago, which currently holds the status of a developed nation yet culturally stands in a liminal space between the developed and developing world. This study responds to Grech’s (2015) call for research that gives voice to realities on the ground in developing countries, by offering a close-up, nuanced analysis of issues that are too often over-simplified.

Author

• Beth Harry, University of Miami