The MRER Lecture Series will be holding the next lecture on Tuesday 5 December at 17:00 in Room 326, Old Humanities, Faculty of Education Boardroom.
The lecture, entitled 'Transforming 19th century school inspection to 21st century school improvement: can Malta manage it?', will be delivered by Dr Sandro Spiteri Ed.D.
Abstract
Throughout most of the 164 years of British colonial rule, education was not simply caught up in the politics of the times, but was part of its very fabric. Education – the language of instruction, the quality and extent of elementary and secondary education, the constitution of, access to and teaching in the University of Malta – was a key battleground for the soul of the nation. Education was where the irresistible force of the ‘civilizing’ project of the Empire met the immovable wall of resistance of the Catholic Church and the Maltese legal-nobility-ecclesiastical class that sheltered behind it – with unexpected results that spilled over the formal handing-over of political sovereignty in 1964. A key factor in this struggle for and accommodation of power(s) was the evolving purpose and function of educational inspection.
This lecture looks at the ‘competing’ discourses of school inspection and school improvement in the major milestones of Malta’s attempts at whole-system educational reform from the 1950 to-date, from the perspective of the shifting power dynamic between the ‘centre’ and the schools. The lecture starts with an overview of the rise and decay of school inspection during the 19th and 20th centuries. The paradigm of school-focussed development through teacher professionalization is then discussed, as it emerged and informed the 1995 watershed policy document ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ and National Minimum Curriculum of 2000.
This leads to an analysis of the particular model of ‘quality’ in education enshrined in the 2006 Education Act in terms of Malta’s micro-state, post-colonial reality. The rhetoric of this quality culture was of a particular kind, with a hybrid ideology that touched upon improvement, compliance and accountability. Was this the only or most feasible way forward to nudge teachers and schools towards better outcomes? Finally, the lecture debates whether the educational reforms implemented and planned since 2013 have the potential of leading to school improvement.
