A Critique of F. Demie's Achievement of Black Caribbean Pupils: Good Practice in Lambeth Schools

Demie, F. (2005). Achievement of Black Caribbean pupils: good practice in Lambeth schools. British Educational Research Journal 31(4), 481-508.
A Critique.
This paper is a critique of F Demie’s ‘Achievement of Black Caribbean pupils: good practice in Lambeth schools’, which is an interpretive study by Feyisa Demie Jan McKenley, Chris Power, and Louise Ishani. The LEA provided the funding for this research project.
The aim of the research according to Demie was to “Identify a number of significant common themes for success in raising the achievement of Caribbean heritage pupils”. In order to analyse these achievement rates, Researchers looked at good practise in Lambeth schools.
Demie does not provide the reader with any clues in regard to the researchers’ backgrounds and qualifications. One cannot learn from the report under analysis whether Demie et al were LEA employees with a task to prepare a ground for future policy making.

Demie et al hose to study 10 primary and 3 secondary schools in the Lambeth region, where the rates of Black Caribbean performance were reported to be above national and LEA (Local Education Authority) averages. The aim of the investigation was to identify the factors enabling pupils of Black Caribbean origin to achieve high standards in British schools, and to track “significant common themes for success in raising the achievement” (Demie, 2005) of Black Caribbean pupils.

Researchers used a subjectivist and interpretive viewpoint throughout the study. Crotty (1989, p. 83) states that a modern interpretive researcher examines “experience from ‘the point of view’ or ‘perspective’ of the subject”, “experience as people understand it in everyday terms”. Cohen et al. (2000, p. 181) also emphasise that the interpretive subjectivist paradigm attempts “to understand and interpret the world in terms of its actors”.

Demie looked at thirteen case studies, which dealt with a phenomenon of Black Caribbean achievement levels.

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