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Whenever Primary School Examination results come out, and they remind everyone that large quantities of Belizean children are performing poorly, fingers are always pointed in all directions as to where the education system is failing them.

Well, instead of playing the blame game, the Ministry of Education is now collaborating with the highly trained professionals at the Oklahoma State University, create a doctoral degree program for Belizeans who work within the education system. 20 Belizeans, who are either educators or administrators, are being trained to be experts in literacy education. The hope is that these PH.D. students will become the professionals who will shape Belize's education system for the better so that more school children will enjoy greater success in their studies.

This first cohort of doctoral students began that journey on Monday, and today, the Ministry and the facilitators invited the press to view how the beginning of their studies are going. 

Here’s what the professors had to say about this new initiative:

Dr. Jennifer Sanders - School Head, Oklahoma State University
"We have 20 doctoral students who are working toward their Ph.D. in education, with a specialization in language literacy and culture. The interesting thing about a doctoral degree is you get to pursue your own questions, your own interests in developing a better education system, and adding to the research, adding to the conversation of what we know about teaching and learning. So, that’s one of the things they’ll be engaged in. But, the focus for this program is centred around issues of language, literacy, and culture, and how those 3 concepts connect, relate, and inform each other. So, we say you can’t do literacy without knowing the culture and understanding the ways that culture influence literacy development, and language development."

Dr. Ben Bindewald - Researcher, Oklahoma State University
"We’re partnered with the Belizean Ministry of Education, and all of our students in the doctoral cohort are Belizean educators of some capacity, either teachers, administrators, literacy coaches. And what we’re doing as American professors, is that we’re trying to learn as much as we can about Belizean culture, and help make connections with our students, help them to make connections with the materials from the courses, and to take that expertise as literacy professors, literacy scholars, back to the teachers of Belize, and to help literacy education in the classroom."

Dr. Jennifer Sanders
"Our thought was - our idea was, we need to have teacher educators. We need to have professors, and educational leaders in the country, who have an expert level of knowledge in literacy education. So, we need to develop a doctoral cohort to do so. We need people who have their Ph.D. in literacy education to become the leaders in Belize, so that, we don’t keep having to have outsiders like me and Dr. Bindewald come in to do professional development workshops."

Darlene Lozano - Ph.D. Student, Literacy Education
"We don’t have research for our country. This is going to give us 20 students, the opportunity to do research in our country on issues that affect literacy, and this would be the basis for us to make changes from the top to the bottom, and from the bottom up."

Rashid Murrillo - Ph.D. Student, Literacy Education
"Our work that we’re doing is trying to impact everybody. So, we’re not doing it for ourselves again. We’re doing it to help everybody. It’s just our small part that we’re doing to make sure that child in standard 2 will be able to pick up that book confidently, at their level, without worrying, or without any fear of ‘Oh, I don’t know how to read."

These 20 students will receive face to face instruction for several weeks, after which, they will continue their first semester through online study.