Articles written by Doreen Spiteri

Volume 8-Issue 1: June 2014

Through their eyes and with their words: An exploration of the immigrant students in Malta and their perceptions of Malta’s two official languages

In various countries in Europe, immigrant students settle into a new school – a process fraught with difficulties and challenges as they struggle to make sense of their new surroundings and new ways of being, mediated through what is often a foreign language. For such students in Malta the task is doubled as they need to cope with two languages – Maltese and English – both present in the educational setup and essential for the transition into Maltese school life. This article reports on part of a multiple case study that explored immigrant students’ experiences and perceptions of the two languages in Maltese state secondary education. Through a process of trust building and interviews, the immigrant students were invited to express their feelings verbally and through drawings to better communicate what they were going through. The result is a touching wakeup call to the particular hardships faced by these students as they attempt to cope with two linguistic codes in a context that is not always supportive.

Volume 9-Issue 2: December 2015

English in Malta, English in Bristol. What implications for teacher education?

This article explores some emerging issues surrounding two teacher education courses in different parts of the world which share a similar purpose: preparing student teachers to become secondary school teachers of English. In one context the English language is the first language, in the other, the second. However, the distinction is not so neat when learner differences in levels of proficiency are factored in, and is even less neat with the influx in both contexts of immigrant students who are new to learning English. How are teacher educators and student teachers responding to this changing scenario while simultaneously acclimatizing to new national curricula, both placing an emphasis on developing students’ writing skills? The article refers to this one aspect of teacher education course - the teaching of writing skills to secondary school students - and compares the curricular implications in terms of how the PGCE teacher education courses respond.

Volume 13-Issue 2: December 2019

English for All: Repositioning English across the curriculum

The curricular reform underway is ostensibly aimed at providing an equitable education for all which acknowledges the different pathways learners may take and their different rates of development. Additional contenders for the reasons behind the reform lie in the acknowledgement that schools could be delivering more to improve results on international examinations and to increase the numbers of qualified school leavers as well as the numbers of those continuing into post-secondary and tertiary education. To achieve this, the discourse of teaching and learning is being reframed as one of outcomes of learning. While there are potential benefits in competency-based models of education, it is here argued that a part- solution to the problems that prompted the reform might lie in improving students’ academic literacy skills. In an educational context where several school subjects are mediated through English, where classes are increasingly multilingual, where post-secondary and tertiary education is mediated through English, where mobility is a growing trend, focussing on academic literacy skills is a worthwhile goal.