Perspectives on British expatriate science teachers in a Caribbean context

Abstract

In this article, I report on the findings of a qualitative critical analysis of student, teacher and administrator accounts of the employment of British expatriate science teachers in a given Caribbean context. I utilise the complicity/resistance construct of postcolonial theory as the analytic framework for this inquiry, foregrounding the meanings that research participants attached to the geographic origins of science teachers. These meanings place the expatriate teachers in complicated positions of privilege that elicit certain responses from students, colleagues and the expatriate teachers themselves. I discuss the implications of participant insights that reinforce a call for further postcolonial critique of the employment of Western expatriate teachers in once-colonised settings.