Slippery Rock University professors and students conducted illuminating work in the field of educational equity recently in the Caribbean island nation of Dominica.
Enoh Nkana, associate professor, and Michelle Amodei, professor, from the Curriculum, Instruction, Educational Leadership Department, took four students to Dominica to conduct research for two weeks in July 2025.
The group conducted interviews with members of the indigenous Kalinago community, the only remaining pre-Columbian indigenous Carib community in Dominica. The goal of this research was to develop “culturally relevant educational resources” for the historically marginalized community.
Nkana got the idea to pursue this project while participating in a faculty learning group here at SRU, which included Franklyn Charles, an associate professor of strategic communication and media, who is a native of Dominica. Nkana accompanied him on a trip to Dominica in 2022 and in 2023, Nkana and Amodei returned together and began the research project focused on educational resources. In 2025, they returned to collect final observations, interviews and community interactions.
“We wanted to see if the education that kids were receiving was about the island and its culture or if it was general,” Nkana said.
After concluding that Kalinago children were receiving a general education that had little to do with their personal experiences, Nkana and Amodei started gathering the information necessary to create learning resources that honor the Kalinago culture. The goal of the project in Dominica is to ensure that the content that will reach schools in Kalinago territory will be both culturally relevant and have everything students would need to meet their learning goals.
“We talked to people about growing up in Kalinago territory,” Nkana said. “We interviewed local historians, educational professionals, and leaders. We visited local historical sites and the cultural resource center. We wanted to get a sense of what resources already existed.”
Since collecting all of their data, Nkana and Amodei have been developing a culturally relevant curriculum for Kalinago students and have produced a conference proposal based on this work which has been accepted for presentation at the Hawaii International Conference in Jan. 2026. They plan to publish their findings in the coming year.
Nkana and Amodei both have academic interests in accessibility and equity in education which informed their work in this project. In fact, their research in Dominica has been incorporated into their courses as these examples can help SRU students to understand the significance of culturally relevant curriculum in the classroom. Creating curriculum that both honors culture and is rigorous in its content is an unmet need, according to Nkana and Amodei.
“There is much work to be done in the United States about cultural humility,” Amodei said. “We have a lot to learn about openness and curiosity.”
Nkana agrees with this sentiment, adding that the story of the Kalinago people in Dominica has been a story of relegation from ancestral lands, resource scarcity, and a lack of attention and care being placed on their unique culture. This treatment, Nkana and Amodei emphasize, mirrors that treatment of indigenous populations in the United States.
“This experience made us think of leadership and resource distribution in new ways and the importance of being allies to the marginalized people right now by building trust and doing what you say you’re going to do,” Amodei said.
Nkana also notes that increased sensitivity to the needs of marginalized communities and to the needs of families within marginalized communities is imperative for accomplishing the broader goals of their research in Dominica.
These connections to life and issues of education in the United States made this project perfect for student participation. On both trips that Nkana and Amodei made to the island, groups of students came along. Those students include:
- Dylin Keener, a senior special education major from Washington (Canon-McMillan HS)
- Heaven Jacoway, a 2025 graduate with a degree in early childhood education.
- Autumn Crawford, a sophomore early childhood education major from Coatesville (Downingtown East HS)
- Mathieu Janco, a junior early childhood and special education major from Pittsburgh (Chartiers Valley HS)
Students took leadership roles in the research and worked together with Charles’ communication students. Nkana and Amodei have characterized this experience as truly cross disciplinary.
“We all spent a lot of time together and got to know each other very well, which happens when you travel like we did,” Amodei said. “Seeing all these interactions between is a reminder about what great talent we here at SRU.”
Nkana and Amodei’s research was supported by a $9,915 award from Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education’s Faculty Professional Development Council.