Vol. 16 no. 2 / December 2022

In spite of recent progress in the area, Malta scored just below the EU-27 average in a recent European report on gender inequality. Among the key issues flagged, were uneven concentrations of women and men in education, as well as gaps in employment and unadjusted pay. This paper explores some of the prospective underlying mechanisms continuing to drive such forms of inequity in Malta, with a special focus on sex-segregation in further and higher education. An empirical, quantitative research methodology based on various forms of contingency table analysis was selected, combined with a Popperian post-positivist approach to null hypothesis-testing. Binary logistic and log-linear modelling techniques were applied to secondary public data from the Maltese National Statistics Office, on the distributions of student and worker populations by sex and field from the 2016/17 academic year. The findings showed that Maltese women in the academic track were more than twice as likely to challenge gender stereotypes by taking up traditionally masculine-labelled courses than their peers in the vocational tracks. Women in the academic track were also less likely to end up in feminine-labelled roles in the workplace. The Maltese further and higher education system was nonetheless heavily sex-segregated overall when compared to the workplace, with Maltese women three times as likely to find themselves in feminine-labelled fields at college or university, than they were at work. Declining occupational sex-segregation was interpreted within the context of ever-increasing competition for available work, and thereby construed as a symptom of the devaluation of labour power inherent in capital-labour relations. In an increasingly neoliberalist and gender-essentialist ideological climate, the paper goes on to argue that such a devaluation places women, specifically, at heightening risk of intensifying capitalist exploitation, engendering a heightened impetus towards emancipatory curricular reform, and authentic system-wide deconstruction of enduring gender stereotypes in Maltese further and higher education.

It is commonly held that an examination body should maintain a standard level of difficulty across different years, tiers, and subjects. Grade setting does depend, to a certain extent, on expert judgement and, not surprisingly, different studies have suggested that the same standard of difficulty is not maintained across different examination boards and subjects. In this study the level of difficulty of subjects is measured by comparing the mean general ability of candidates who obtain the same grades in the different subjects at Secondary Education Certificate (SEC), which are offered by the MATSEC Examinations Board of the University of Malta. The research method and the ensuing results are explained in detail and discussed. The outcomes show that although some differences between subjects are present, with one subject in particular being flagged as being possibly graded much easier than other subjects, differences between most subjects were not significant enough to allow a clear ordering in terms of difficulty.

Proficiency in the language spoken in the host country permeates all aspects of reception and integration for adult migrants who seek to relocate to and live in a new country. For the newly arrived adult migrant, acquisition of the host society’s language will depend in part on the potential access to the language (including its teaching in the host society) but also on the extent to which it is used in everyday life. With Malta having two official languages, language integration acquires a new, more complex dimension. In this respect, the Maltese-English bilingual context can present several challenges, because both languages are important and because they vary considerably in respect to their function and to the domain in which they are used. In this study we look into the narratives of 15 adult migrants following the I Belong Maltese language integration programme by linking the classroom experience to their needs and actual exposure to the Maltese language in their everyday life. Results indicate that participants’ experience of the programme is overall positive, with many showing how their interest in the Maltese language goes beyond a certificate which allows them to apply for long term residence in Malta, to a genuine interest in the Maltese language and way of life. Language needs and exposure vary drastically, with participants reporting varied levels of interaction within the community and factors such as locality of residence, type of employment, and reliance on the English language all playing a significant role in the challenge of learning Maltese in bilingual Malta.

Anxiety is a frequently experienced mental health issue among children and youth, particularly among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) due to their adverse experiences in social and school settings. Child anxiety often remains unnoticed or misinterpreted, and this leads to delayed diagnosis and treatment of children’s anxiety issues. Educators and professionals also face difficulties in diagnosing the anxiety of children due to the lack of valid and reliable instruments for screening and diagnostics of children’s anxiety. This study applied the SCARED scale for children and parents, which is a proven screening instrument for the identification of children’s anxiety to examine parents’ perception and awareness of the anxiety experienced by their children diagnosed with ADHD. The scale was translated and administered to 11 to 13-year-old children and their parents. Based on responses from 65 parent-child dyads, this study found that the translated and modified scoring procedure of the SCARED scale used in this study effectively identified higher anxiety levels in children with clinically diagnosed ADHD compared to children with no such condition. This was so for both the child and the parent versions of the SCARED. The study also identified high levels of correlation between the children’s self-ratings and their parents’ ratings of these same children, but children’s self-reported scores were significantly higher than the level of anxiety perceived by their parents. Overall, the study found that the translated and modified SCARED scale could be used to screen children’s anxiety. However, a large-scale analysis is necessary to precisely confirm the metric characteristics of the SCARED scale.

The dominant discourse used to justify the costs and need of state-funded Further Education (FE) in Malta mirrors that in European Union policy documents, which emphasise the development of human capital, the utility of FE to the individual and the assumed direct link between FE and economic growth. The emphasis, at least in policies, is on what employers want rather what students want for themselves or what educators think is educationally desirable. In this paper, I propose using the capabilities approach as a framework for reimaging FE and post-compulsory technical education as a process of freedom and empowerment. Amartya Sen describes capabilities as freedoms which involve both the processes that allow the freedom of action and making decisions, and also the opportunities that are available. He envisions successful societies as those in which its members are able to participate effectively and influence the spheres effecting their lives – socially, economically and politically. Capabilities can be enhanced by public policy. The capabilities proposed to give students the freedom to make their own choices and participate more fully in society are: practical reasoning; affiliation; informed vision; resilience; social and collective struggle; emotional reflexivity; integrity; and knowledge and skills.

There is no abstract for this book review.