Collaborating with Early Childhood Education (ECE) Colleagues in Malta

by Dr Liz Chesworth

Over the past twelve months, I have been participating in regular online meetings with Dr Josephine Deguara from the University of Malta and Dr Shirley-Ann Gauci from the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology. Josephine and Shirley have strong connections with the University of Sheffield and are alumnae of the School of Education’s Malta PhD programme which ran between 2009 and 2019 in partnership with St Catherine’s School (Pembroke, Malta).

Josephine, Shirley and I have Early Childhood Education (ECE) as our common research interest and we have been using our meetings to discuss and conceptualise issues relating to ECE curriculum policy and practice. As a result of these discussions, the idea to put our conversations into writing developed. Our first co-authored blog post has recently been published by the University of Malta and focuses on the complexities of ECE curriculum reform in Malta and England. Meeting to discuss and write about these issues has provided a springboard for further collaboration and we are currently planning a small-scale study to investigate early childhood educators’ curriculum mediation in Malta.

Dr Liz Chesworth is a senior lecturer in early childhood education and leads the ECE research cluster in the School of Education.