Literacy, Pedagogy and School Environments
11:25 - 13:05 | Meeting Room 4 (Level 0)
Chair: Prof. Doreen Spiteri
Ms Lorraine Bugeja
Centre for Academic Literacies and English Communication Skills
Materials development is widely recognised as integral to educational practitioners' professional lives; however, how practitioners engage in the materials development process within academic literacy provision remains under-explored. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the strategies and decision-making processes involved in developing academic literacy materials designed to support students’ engagement with disciplinary academic practices. The research focuses on a group of academic literacy practitioners and their experience with developing such materials for a newly introduced academic literacy programme implemented as part of a higher education institution-wide initiative. Through two rounds of in-depth semi-structured interviews and document analysis, the study captures the processes and demands at both the programme’s inception and the completion of its first stage, while foregrounding the practitioners’ lack of prior experience in this context. This presentation reports on the preliminary findings from the first round of interviews, which highlight practitioner engagement with materials design at the programme implementation stage. The findings suggest that practitioners employed a systematic approach to materials development, broadly reflecting approaches advocated in the literature (e.g. Jolly & Bolitho, 2011). They also show how, within this institutional context, materials development extended beyond a procedural activity typical of the design process, documenting the impact of change through the practitioner’s professional judgement, negotiation of expectations, and interpretation.
Ms Stefania Pace
Centre for Academic Literacies and English Communication Skills
A primary challenge in academic writing is the intensive cognitive processing required to transition from source text comprehension to a synthesis integrated into a seamless argumentative discourse – a key skill for literature reviews. At the core of this challenge lies the reading-into-writing process, in which the writer negotiates the boundaries between external sources and internal reasoning. The focus of this presentation is a study that investigates how second-year undergraduate Maltese students process, use, and integrate source texts when completing an argumentative reading-into-writing task. It is considered a cognitively loaded task, as argument construction is informed by different sources noticed during reading and subsequently selected in writing. The study traces students’ interactions with source texts across task stages and examines how engagement with source ideas develops over time. Drawing on the distinction between knowledge-telling and knowledge-transforming (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), the study explores whether source information is predominantly reported in the written text or reorganised in relation to the argument.
By analysing the written texts, I was able to trace the transformation and identify how the ideas from multiple sources were linked and realised linguistically and rhetorically. Data consist of think-aloud protocols collected during task completion, complemented by analyses of stance, rhetorical moves, and source integration in students’ writing. The findings identify three process–product patterns of source engagement and textual outcomes. These are not intended as levels of writing ability but reflect how source engagement and integration unfold across the task.
Ms Christine Fenech
Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Education
Over the past decade, Malta has experienced a significant population growth, primarily driven by the increase in non-Maltese residents. This demographic shift is reflected in increasing enrolments of non-Maltese students predominantly in Independent and State schools, while Church schools remain relatively homogenous. However, the academic achievement of migrant students in Malta overall and across sectors remains underexplored. Drawing on data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 for Malta, this research examines differences in academic achievement in mathematics, reading and science across school sectors, with a specific focus on migrant students differentiated by migration generation (Maltese-born, second-generation and first-generation students). In addition, it analyses sectoral differences in students’ socio-economic and socio-cultural resources.
The findings highlight pronounced sectoral stratification in academic achievement and socio-economic background, both for Maltese and non-Maltese students, with students from Independent schools consistently demonstrating both socio-economic and academic advantages compared to students enrolled in other sectors. However, the findings also reveal substantial heterogeneity within the migrant student population. In State schools, second-generation migrant students often outperform Maltese-born peers in reading and science despite lower levels of socio-economic and socio-cultural capital. In contrast, patterns observed in Church and Independent schools suggest selective enrolment mechanisms linked to socio-economic resources, educational aspirations and familiarity with school choice processes.
These results underscore the importance of distinguishing among different migrant profiles and are best understood through a segmented assimilation lens, highlighting how the school sector, migration background, socio-cultural and socio-economic resources interact to shape divergent educational trajectories in Malta.
Ms Stephanie Bugeja
Department of Youth, Community and Migration Studies, Faculty for Social Wellbeing
The school break plays a critical role in fostering students’ overall well-being by providing opportunities to engage in activities that support their physical, emotional, and social development (McLoughlin et al., 2021). Research consistently underscores that these periods are not ‘simply a habitual, relatively unimportant pause in a busy day’ (Baines & Blatchford, 2019, p. 5) but are fundamental for fostering a range of essential skills and promoting overall well-being.
This research seeks to explore how school-break experiences impact the holistic well-being – physical, emotional, and social – of young people aged 13–16 years in Maltese secondary schools. It aims to provide a better understanding of the school break through the exploration of school policies and procedures, the value stakeholders place on the school break, and the outcomes of human and non-human entanglements that emerge during the school break. Heads, teachers, break-time supervisors and students form the pool of informants. Data will be analysed using Thematic Analysis and Diffractive Analysis.
This study employs a qualitative, new materialist case-study approach to three secondary schools in Malta (one state, one church and one independent). Specifically, Barad’s works (1999, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014) inform the theoretical framework. This posthuman approach is employed because the school break is considered an emergent reality, co-constituted by the relationships among the various elements at play, including time, space, and policy.
Findings from this research are intended to provide vital, context-specific recommendations for promoting measures that ensure a more inclusive school break for all students.