OAR@UM Community:/library/oar/handle/123456789/1375942025-11-10T21:22:56Z2025-11-10T21:22:56ZStretching boundaries of critical education : past, present and future possibilities [Book review]Baldacchino, Godfrey/library/oar/handle/123456789/1378532025-08-01T05:58:14Z2025-06-01T00:00:00ZTitle: Stretching boundaries of critical education : past, present and future possibilities [Book review]
Authors: Baldacchino, Godfrey
Abstract: What do I profess? I was once thus questioned at Heathrow Airport by an
immigration officer, having jotted down ‘professor’ as my employment on an
immigration form. It is not an easy question to answer, especially on the fly.
As one of so many educators, I often worry and think about how best to engage
with my classroom, and its human subjects, shaping this amalgam into an
exciting and energising experience, with productive consequences beyond the
lecture itself. But: what if my students are just interested in securing a grade
and getting on with their lives? What does ‘education’ really mean to these
persons? And do I bother to publish for my own self-aggrandisement,
especially when so many students don’t read, even if they had time to do so?
These hard questions keep piling up. We never successfully address them; and
they never go away. But we can try and get to better grips with them by
venturing in either of two directions: upstream, to better understand the
contexts and dynamics that have led to the contemporary classroom; and
downstream, to scrutinise how to foster specific educational settings that build
respectful, dialectical, peer-to-peer conversations; that liberate and empower
those involved. (Calling those involved ‘students’ here is quite unsavoury.) [excerpt]
Description: Full bibliographic record: Carmel Borg and Peter Mayo (Eds.) (2025). Stretching boundaries of critical
education: Past, present and future possibilities. Faculty of Education, University
of Malta. ISBN: 978-9918-20-334-5.2025-06-01T00:00:00Z