Christopher Bezzina

This paper presents the findings of a local study that investigated the motivation, job satisfaction, commitment and general health among 237 Maltese and Gozitan secondary school teachers. This research, which is part of a an international study entitled Teacher 2000 Project, shows that our teachers are mostly extrinsically motivated, mainly attracted to teaching by the family commitment factor. A high percentage of teachers were found to be generally satisfied with their job. The most satisfying aspects of their work were when their students achieved success in some way, the 'official' working hours and when working with higher academic ability students. Teachers stated that they spend the highest amount of their professional time on face-to-face teaching. Altruism and family factors rather than personal and career-oriented factors, were the items the teachers felt mostly committed to. To a certain extent, the majority of the respondents did not have excessive stress symptoms, as it resulted, that the more satisfied teachers are with their job, the least likely are they to have any stress symptoms. Several significant main effects among demographic variables, when compared to the factors mentioned above resulted. These findings are interpreted in the light of current educational developments in Malta.

Explores the crucial components behind current educational reform practices in Malta. These are aimed at decentralising responsibilities to schools through a system of networking. This paper aims to present the education authorities with an introductory critique that contextualises the potential networking of schools within the nurturing of inclusive learning communities. It is argued that unless the principles of hope, faith, commitment, individual and collective worth are established, then networks will not on their own work to bring about desired change in the quality of education. The paper takes networking between schools beyond identified school activities to issues of management and leadership. The benefits are presented alongside the various tensions and concerns that need to be addressed.

Educational systems are constantly subjected to changes on many fronts. School self-evaluation has become recognized as a way of improving the quality of educational provision and simultaneously making schools responsible and accountable to various stakeholders. This paper seeks to present and analyse the implementation of a school self-evaluation process and its effect on the performance of a Maltese Church school. A case study approach supported by questionnaire surveys and a review of school documents were undertaken to establish whether school self-evaluation brought about the desired improvement and initiated a change process within the school. The main results show that whilst the students are performing well academically the school building and timetable constraints are affecting curriculum implementation and students’ potential to achieve more. Whilst there is a committed teaching staff, collaborative initiatives are still in their initial phase. Communication with parents needs to be improved and the area of differentiation and addressing the individual needs of students is also identified as an area needing immediate attention. Overall, this case study has gone a long way to show the educators at the school site the internal potential of a self-evaluation process as it helps them to appreciate their own strengths and weaknesses and providing feedback from varied stakeholders about how they perceive things and what can be done to bring about improvements.