Denise Mifsud at her graduation from the University of Stirling.

Denise Mifsud was awarded her Doctor of Philosophy degree during a graduation ceremony at the University of Stirling last month.

Her study, entitled ‘Raising the curtain on relations of power in a Maltese school network’, was supervised by Professor Cate Watson. The study concerns school reform in Malta.

Under the policy framework For All Children to Succeed (Ministry of Education, Youth & Employment, 2005), referred to in the report as FACT, Maltese State schools embarked on the process of being organised into networks called ‘colleges’. The purpose of her research was to explore relations of power in a Maltese college.

Mifsud’s study gives prominence to both theory and methodology. The theoretical research question investigates how networking unfolds among the various leadership hierarchies in school governance in a Maltese college.

This is explored through the performance of policy-mandated collegiality; the circulating relations of power; and leadership distribution. Through narrative, she attempts to answer her methodological research question that investigates the ways a researcher negotiates the methodological tensions and contradictions in the conduct of qualitative inquiry in order to construct knowledge differently.

The Maltese college is viewed as a surveillance mechanism by both the principal and the heads, with collegiality being regarded as a straitjacket imposed by the State through a policy mandate. However, there is unanimous agreement on conscription being the only way forward for Maltese state schools.

Different degrees of ‘support’ and empowerment exist, according to the directives of the Principal and the State. College set-up is problematised on geographical clustering and college streaming, due to which it may end up defying the primary aim of networking by clustering students from particular areas in isolation, resulting in social injustice and educational inequality.

The study exposes a strong sense of sectoral isolation among the heads – a situation being mirrored at macro-level with very few opportunities for inter-networking among colleges. There is an asymmetrical power flow among the college schools, both within the same level and across different levels.

Despite the policy FACT mandating distributed leadership, hierarchical forms of accountability are still inherent within the system, bringing out a tension between autonomy and centralisation.

Dr Mifsud’s study was partly funded by the Malta Government Scholarship Scheme (MGSS).