Faculty of Education journal and books officially launched

No fewer than seven books by faculty members and an online journal were officially launched at a special event to commemorate the Faculty of Education's 25th anniversary held at the Green Lounge of Le Meridien Phoenicia on June 27.

The director-general of education, academics and educational practitioners, attended this event, which included a publications display, consisting of books, monographs, papers in refereed journals and edited anthologies and CDs by academics from the Faculty of Education.

The importance that this faculty attaches to research was underlined in the opening address by the outgoing Dean, Professor Mark G. Borg, author of several studies in educational psychology published in UK and other foreign refereed journals.

The incoming Dean, Dr Carmel Borg, and Bernard Agius, from the faculty's Teacher Resource Centre, then provided a powerpoint display concerning the new online refereed journal, Journal of Maltese Education Research. The journal's editorial team consists of faculty members with a proven track record in international academic publishing. They are assisted by an international advisory board made up of established foreign academics and four Maltese academics based in foreign universities.

Each manuscript submitted for consideration to be published in the journal is sent to two referees. Dr Borg mentioned the possibility of having special issues and underlined the advantages of having this journal on the Web.

He then acted as compère for the rest of the programme which consisted of presentations by faculty members of books they authored or edited which saw the light during academic year 2002-2003.

The first to present was Terence Portelli, from the faculty's Department of Arts and Languages in Education, who presented the book he co-authored with Dr Antoinette Camilleri Grima entitled Stedina ghat-Taghlim fis-Sekondarja, published by Dyad Publications.

Mr Portelli emphasised the importance of having this book written in Maltese, showing the suitability of this language for use in academic and other specialised areas. Stedina deals with the following aspects of teaching at secondary level: school and classroom observations by student teachers; the learning environment; the curriculum, syllabus and attainment targets; the process of planning lessons; preparation for teaching; considerations concerning language skills; considerations concerning language teaching; classroom communication; learning resources; pupils' work; the use of the Maltese language in the Maltese educational system.

Mr Portelli was followed by Dr Christopher Bezzina, who presented the book Inside Secondary Schools: A Maltese Reader and its accompanying workbook, both of which he co-edited with his faculty colleagues, Dr Antoinette Camilleri-Grima, David Purchase and Dr Ronald G. Sultana.

This set of books, published by Indigo Books, aims to introduce students following the B.Ed. (Hons) secondary specialisation course to secondary school life. It does this by exploring ten themes at the heart of educational development and improvement in Maltese secondary schools. It provides students with opportunities to learn by reading, researching, observing, discussing, sharing and doing.

Students are encouraged to adopt the role of reflective observers, drawing on theoretical insights in order to make pedagogical sense of the varieties of experiences that arise and are constructed within a secondary school setting. They are encouraged to focus on the school as an institution, on the classroom, on the curriculum, on teachers and on learners.

Through their interaction with the varied school cultures students become more aware of what it means to be educated at the secondary school level and pursue the construction of their identity as prospective teachers on the basis of experience and critical reflection.

Dr Bezzina was followed by Professor Peter Mayo, who presented two books, the first of which is edited by his colleague, Professor Ronald G. Sultana, who could not attend because of an academic engagement abroad (Professor Mayo was asked to present this work on Professor Sultana's behalf), and the second which he co-edited.

Professor Sultana's book is Teacher Education in the Euro-Mediterranean Region published by the New York-based publishing house, Peter Lang. The book provides work in connection with the Mediterranean Comparative Education Programme which Professor Sultana has been co-ordinating at the University of Malta since the mid-Nineties and which has now become a key feature of the University's centre for Euro-Mediterranean Studies in Education also co-ordinated by Professor Sultana.

The programme gave rise to a refereed research journal, Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, of which Professor Sultana is founding editor, and a number of annual seminars in which papers are delivered by scholars from different countries in the Mediterranean.

This book is a collection of papers from one of these seminars and is meant to shed light on some of the developments taking place in teacher education in various parts of the region. The book provides a good mix of scholars from the Mediterranean's northern and southern parts, including both Southern-European and Arab scholars. In this respect, it is quite representative.

Professor Mayo then went on to present the book he co-edited with Dr Carmel Borg and a Maltese US-based scholar, Professor Joseph Buttigieg (University of Notre Dame, Indiana) - Gramsci & Education, published by Rowman & Littlefield (US). Work on this project started in 1997 and a team of internationally renowned scholars was assembled mainly through electronic networking.

The presentation consisted, for the most part, of a powerpoint display indicating the various chapters of the book written by scholars from not only the educational field but also from such fields as sociology, political science and literature. It was pointed out by both Professor Mayo and Dr Borg that Antonio Gramsci is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice.

Gramsci & Education is an anthology of essays that demonstrates the relevance of Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates.

The collection deals with a broad range of areas, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. This, according to Dr Borg, indicates that the Faculty produces publications that are concerned not only with schooling but with education in its broader contexts.

Next to present was Dr Sandro Caruana, a specialist in the teaching of Italian. His book, Mezzi di Comunicazione e Input Linguistico - L'acquisizione dell'Italiano L2 a Malta, is based on his Ph.D. thesis from the Università degli Studi di Pavia (Italy), which he completed in 2001. It is published by the Milan publishing house, Franco Angeli.

Dr Caruana argued that Malta offers an ideal setting to investigate the extent to which the linguistic input from the media may be significant in second language (L2) acquisition. Although Italian is not spoken in Malta, many individuals are exposed to this language via the media as Italian TV programmes are popular on the island. The extent to which Italian may be acquired via the media is discussed, in this book, by taking into account research carried out among guided and spontaneous learners of Italian L2.

In the past, various studies have shown that it is possible to understand Italian L2 after being exposed to it via television. Dr Caruana's study investigates whether there are also the necessary conditions which enable Maltese students to learn to speak Italian after being exposed to the language regularly by means of television programs.

Despite the unidirectional nature of television and the absence of the possibility to interact and negotiate so as to modify or simplify the L2 input, results show that L2 input from Italian TV programmes may help to learn the language, even in the case of learners who have never undergone formal instruction in the L2. This, inevitably, has repercussions on the teaching of Italian in Malta.

The presence of the Italian media clearly puts the language in an advantageous position when compared to other languages, such as German or French, which are taught in local schools. It is also beyond doubt, that, while acknowledging that the degree of spontaneous acquisition via television varies between one student and another, many Maltese students develop refined skills at a very young age even before initiating the process of formal learning of Italian.

Also, exposure to the language via the media is a useful reinforcement tool both for students who are still learning the language and for those who have completed their formal schooling years.

The final presenter was Dr Antoinette Camilleri-Grima who presented two books, one co-edited and one single authored. The first book is Transcending Monolingualism: Linguistic revitalisation in education, a book she co-edited with Leena Huss from Uppsala University, Sweden, and Kendall A. King from Georgetown University, USA. The book was published this year by Swets and Zeitlinger, an international publishing House, as part of a series on Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity.

This book presents 13 instances of mostly successful language educational policies from around the world. It gives an overview of minority language rights according to international legislation, and presents a discussion of linguists' role in language revitalisation and language policy formation.

The second book, which she authored, is entitled How Strange! The use of anecdotes in the development of intercultural competence and was published in 2002 by the Council of Europe as part of a series on modern language teaching and based on project work carried out at the European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz, Austria.

This book looks at the theoretical underpinning for the development of intercultural competence in the language classroom, and gives plenty of innovative teaching ideas that could be applied in any language classroom.

Dr Borg tied up the proceedings by indicating that there are more publications by faculty members in the pipeline including the translation of a book, originally produced in England by Professor Mayo and which has gone into reprint, into four other languages (German, Turkish, Catalan and Portuguese), the ongoing Journal of Postcolonial Education which, though produced in Australia, is mainly edited by Maltese scholars from the faculty (Professor Mayo is the founding editor and Dr Borg is now co-editor), a book on sexuality and education being produced by Dr Paul Bartolo, the Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies edited by Professor Sultana (now in its eight volume), a book on the Learning Society authored by Professor Kenneth Wain and to be produced by Peter Lang, a book of interviews which Dr Borg himself is preparing with Professor Mayo for which a contract has been signed with Peter Lang, as well as a book Dr Borg is co-editing with Colin Calleja on marginalised children and youth.

The long and short of his concluding intervention is that there is enough material for a similar event to be held next year.