The study illustrates the potential of the rep grid as a tool for reflection and yields useful insights into the professional understandings of practitioners working on a CPD course. Participants themselves commented positively on the opportunity to examine the constructs they used to describe children and to reflect critically upon them. The article explores a technique for the encouragement of systematic thinking which had its origins in industry but has been found effective for a variety of educational purposes from classroom to senior management level. This article describes and assesses in-service training seminars which were set up in 1995 in the Orange Walk District of Belize with the aim of improving educational opportunities for special needs pupils in mainstream schools. The background to the project is briefly described, including an outline of existing forms of teacher training.
Reference is made to the particular difficulties of training delivered by expatriates.
Comments on the advantages and drawbacks to the use of the materials in the Belize context are given. Whole staff training through an active learning approach reduced some of the distancing effects of expatriate led training and resulted in stonger local ownership of the changes in practice advocated. The implications of distance, and of partnership between schools and the School of Education, in delivering the required competencies in IT and in supporting IT provision are explored and recommendations made. The research in this article highlights the concerns felt by primary school teachers facing an increased responsibility for Initial Teacher Training. The paper indicates that the development of partnership is problematic and that the transfer of responsibility for Initial Teacher Training from higher education into schools is likely to be difficult.