https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/15375 2026-09-26T13:59:23Z 2026-09-26T13:59:23Z Wright, Edward https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149418 2026-09-25T11:31:48Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Thinking faithfully together : catholic religious education, ethics, and the philosophy for children pedagogy Authors: Wright, Edward Abstract: This conceptual article examines how Catholic Religious Education (CRE) and Ethics in Maltese schools might enter a constructive pedagogical dialogue while retaining distinct disciplinary identities. Rather than proposing curricular merger, hierarchy, or a common epistemology, it advances the more limited claim that a critically appropriated Philosophy for Children (P4C) pedagogy and its Community of Inquiry (CoI) can function as a shared pedagogical grammar. The Maltese case is analytically useful because Ethics is institutionally associated with P4C while recent CRE studies call for more student-centred, constructivist, and existentially responsive approaches. The article treats this proximity as a problem of disciplined borrowing: which dialogical practices can travel across subject boundaries, under what conditions, and what must remain discipline-specific? Drawing on Lipman and sustained critical engagement with Dewey, Freire, Arendt, and Merton, it identifies complementary but non-identical resources for experience-based inquiry, dialogical agency, judgement in plurality, and contemplative attention. Their tensions are retained rather than harmonised. Recent empirical and theoretical literature is used to qualify the scope of the proposal. The resulting framework develops implications for classroom practice, assessment, collaborative professional development, and future empirical research. Its contribution is therefore a bounded model of pedagogical dialogue: CRE may become more dialogical without treating theological sources as interchangeable with philosophical warrants, while Ethics may engage religiously situated moral worlds without compromising philosophical autonomy.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Wright, Edward https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149389 2026-09-25T09:58:07Z 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Facilitating holistic identity formation of adolescents using digital media Authors: Wright, Edward Abstract: In recent decades, Catholic Religious Education (CRE) has been increasingly justified by the support it can provide adolescents to become subjects of life, as well as by its potential to provide opportunities for meaning‑making. Therefore, this chapter will explore how these functions of CRE can become more possible through the creative pedagogy of Media Literacy Education (MLE) and the digital technologies it utilises for storytelling, especially photography and videography. This exercise will also facilitate the exploration of ways through which creative story-telling can effectively become a means for transcendental reflection, thus promoting a narrative pedagogy for CRE that contributes significantly to holistic adolescent identity formation. This chapter will finally reflect on the results of a small scale qualitative pilot study that points to a potential dialogue between CRE and MLE. This chapter demonstrated how skills learnt in MLE, especially photography and film‑making, may be efficiently used to help students during CRE lessons interpret life experiences and discern their purposes in life through the lens of their Catholic faith, thus becoming subjects of their lives.

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z Wright, Edward https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149387 2026-09-25T09:51:10Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Nurturing identity formation in adolescence through narrative learning : a dialogue between the pedagogies of media literacy and religious education Authors: Wright, Edward Abstract: In these last four decades or so, adolescence became understood as the time when young people ask fundamental questions about themselves, each other, the world, and one’s past, present and future life that seek unity of purpose and coherence. For most young people the digital media are popular modalities through which they seek, consciously or unconsciously, meaningful answers to such questions. Multimodal spaces are sites for adolescent identity construction, a reality that prompted media educators to focus more on youth as authors of multimodal productions that provide opportunities to create narratives of self. RE has been increasingly justified by the support it provides students to become subjects of life, and the potential to provide opportunities for meaning-making. This essay explores how these functions of RE become more possible through the creative pedagogy of MLE and the digital technologies it utilizes for storytelling, especially photography and film-making which can engage the processes of interpretation and meaning-making, imagination and critical reflection. The creativity of MLE can be positively utilized in RE for meaning-making and identity formation. This paper draws upon the Maltese context in which RE is more of a confessional nature (CRE). This model could significantly benefit from such an endeavour.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Knieps-Port le Roi, Thomas Schembri, Kevin De Tavernier, Johan https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149334 2026-09-24T09:53:06Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: La théologie du mariage après Vatican II : perspectives théologiques et canoniques Authors: Knieps-Port le Roi, Thomas; Schembri, Kevin; De Tavernier, Johan Abstract: Que signifie parler du mariage aujourd’hui dans une Église qui est encore en train de se réconcilier avec la vision du Concile Vatican II? Fondée sur une approche pastorale centrée sur la personne, cette étude propose une réévaluation de la théologie du mariage, en combinant réflexion théologique et analyse canonique, tout en concevant le mariage comme une communion d’amour dynamique et source de vie. Au coeur de cette réflexion se trouve la vision de Vatican II, toujours aussi convaincante et inachevée, mais qui continue de façonner la compréhension que l’Église a d’elle-même. Attentifs aux réalités vécues par les couples et les familles, les auteurs se penchent sur les enseignements et les normes actuels de l’Église, en mettant en évidence les domaines où un développement et une plus grande sensibilité pastorale sont nécessaires. Aucune réponse facile n’est proposée ici. Au contraire, le lecteur est invité à entrer dans un processus de dialogue et de discernement où la tradition n’est pas abandonnée, mais où on lui permet de grandir.

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