DR Beverley Bryan. She’s a woman whose dedication as an educator is never in question, and there is little wonder why. She has been at it for close to 40 years.

In that time, Bryan has been involved in individual as well as collaborative research work, written numerous academic papers and peer-reviewed articles, and served many communities and thousands of students in Jamaica, other islands of the Caribbean and in Britain.

And even with all of that, she found the time to be a part of the black feminist movement in Britain and was partially responsible for the opening of one of the first black bookshops there.

A former member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent, Bryan has also written two books. The first — Heart of the Race — she co-authored with Suzanne Scafe and Stella Dadzie in the 1980s. The second — Between Two Grammars: Language Teaching and Learning in a Creole-speaking Environment — is to be released by publisher Ian Randle in July or August this year.

“It is primarily for teachers of English, language teachers, educators — people who are interested in questions to do with language teaching in Jamaica and the Caribbean,” Bryan told Career & Education of the new book. “The first chapter is about the socio-linguistics, the language issues. Then I go on to look at the education system in Jamaica and views of language teaching going back to the 19th century and moving forward… Then I look at language goals and methodologies and really different ways of language teaching within this environment. There is a chapter on literature that I really like. There is one on use of communicative authentic material. But really, the book is about looking at the language issues within the Caribbean environment.”

Work on the most recent book aside, Bryan has in the last few years also had her sights set on developing the Department of Educational Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona. In the four years that she has been at the helm of that department, there is much that she has been able to achieve, with the help of her team.

Not least among these achievements has been an improvement to the aesthetics of their building, which for her is an important achievement.

“The upgrading work is about raising the morale of the staff and the teachers who come in — to help them to recognise that teachers are top of the line professionals, and that should be recognised. They must know that they can transform their environment as well. I think the teachers here have appreciated that,” Bryan said.

There is also something to be said, the UWI lecturer noted, for the fact that “it is just nice”.

“It looks tasteful. It doesn’t look like a school environment. It looks like it could be a corporate environment — a professional environment of people who are confident in themselves and who want to show confidence in others,” a laughing Bryan, whose own office exudes Afrocentricity — from the dark, wooden furniture to the artwork on the walls — added.

Under her watch, the Department of Education Studies has, among other things, also:

* opened a literacy centre that is currently doing diagnostic work on students at August Town Primary;

* extended the work of the Science and Math Centre;

* formulated partnerships with local teachers’ colleges to offer various teacher-education programmes;

* formulated partnerships with overseas institutions, notably the University of Redding in the UK, where 10 master’s students and two lecturers will benefit from a summer programme this year;

* set up endowments for needy and/or high-performing students; and

* launched the Journal for Education and Development in the Caribbean.

It was in 1992 that Bryan, a married mother of two, returned to Jamaica, having migrated to England with her parents at the age of nine.

Her work since then, she said, has brought her much satisfaction.

“I have found it a very interesting department. I really enjoy the work that I do here. One of the things I really like about coming back here is finding out that the things that you do actually matter, that you can have an impact on what is actually happening in your country,” Bryan said.

And she has not only been teaching and making improvements at the UWI.

Bryan was involved with the Ministry of Education’s review of the primary curriculum, which meant “that some of my ideas about things like integration, about flooding the classroom with literature, about recognising that in many cases students are monolingual creole speakers and that you have to take account of the language (have been accepted) as part of the Literacy Improvement Initiative.

“That, I think, really led to some of the things that the Task Force on Education took up — literacy co-ordinators ensuring that we have benchmarks in schools, so that you can gradually move the literacy rate,” added Bryan who holds her master’s and PhD qualifications from the University of London.

“I have done similar work in the Eastern Caribbean — Grenada, Dominica, St Lucia and St Vincent. That’s been work that I have been doing over the last 10 years,” the seasoned educator, who has taught at several institutions in the UK, including Brixton College and the University of Greenwich, said further.

Among some of the issues she cares most about is raising the profile of teachers, who Bryan said continue to enjoy a “low status” though people have “a kind of regard for them… and the way in which that allows educational issues to be put on a kind of backburner, unless teachers are going on strike or unless we are talking about exam results. We don’t talk about how we pay teachers or about how we train them and how we assess them”, she said.

In addition, Bryan said there needs to be greater emphasis on promoting language awareness among educators.

“I think we could do with a clearer understanding of the importance of language-aware teachers. Teachers should have a clear understanding of the language spoken in Jamaica and of English,” she told Career & Education. “You want teachers who know Jamaican clearly, who know English clearly and know that they are different. At the moment, you have people in the classrooms who are using language and linguistic items that they think are English but are not.”

Bryan added that better language-aware teachers will see facilitate better learning outcomes for students.

There is, too, the important issue of the persistent inequalities in the Jamaican society that translates into the education system.

“We have to find a way to put more resources in the poorest communities and run them properly… The people who get a hundred per cent in the GSAT (Grade Six Achievement Test) are not the ones who need more resources,” she said, adding that there is the need for a whole unit that focuses on diagnosing the learning needs of students from early childhood through to the secondary level, and which facilitates intervention.

Now four decades on, Bryan has no regrets — despite the existing deficiencies she sees in the education system locally.

“I have been in education all my life and people have tried to get me do other things. This (being head of the Department of Educational Studies) is the nearest I have come to doing something else and I would only be a head of education,” she said. “I have wanted to be a teacher since the age of 12. When I talk to young teachers now, I tell them there is nothing wrong with being a teacher. We need the best.”