https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/1055 2026-09-29T11:37:27Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149510 Title: The book of abstracts Authors: Tutar, Peri; Mayo, Peter; Brown, Maria Abstract: The University of Malta Valletta Campus hosted, once again following 2023, an international conference organised by the UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education on 6–7 November 2025. The conference brought together over 70 participants from South and North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, reflecting the global reach and relevance of Critical Adult Learning and Education (CALE).; Building on the earlier conference held in May 2023 in the context of the International Critical Education Conference (ICCE), CALE 2025 focused exclusively on critical adult education and learning. The conference took place at a historical moment marked by rampant populism, the erosion of distinctions between fact and fiction, intensifying militarisation, corporate encroachment into public spaces, and the growing reduction of education to a narrow technical activity. Against this backdrop, CALE 2025 sought to reaffirm the urgency of critical adult education research and practice. In the spirit of its predecessor, the conference aimed to move beyond critique as denunciation, embracing critique as a generative practice—one that combines critical analysis with the exploration of emancipatory possibilities. The guiding imperative was clear: liberating praxis or sheer barbarism.; The strong engagement and enthusiasm of participants reaffirmed CALE as a significant space for international dialogue in adult and continuing education. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148873 Title: The drama studio as pedagogical space : rehearsing the whole teacher Authors: Gatt, Isabelle Abstract: A drama studio is an open space. Without desks, rows of chairs or a fixed front, familiar expectations of teaching can be noticed and reconsidered. Student teachers enter carrying memories, habits and images of the teachers they might become. This reflective, practice-based chapter asks what becomes possible when these dimensions are given space within initial teacher education. Drawing on over thirty years in theatre and teacher education, including thirteen years in an ensemble theatre laboratory, it reflects on drama workshops and the Teatru Qroqq productions with student teachers in Malta. These experiences show trust developing as participants contribute, take creative risks and respond to one another. Read alongside scholarship on presence, creativity, ensemble and dialogic education, the studio becomes a pedagogical space where habitual actions can be interrupted and possibilities emerge. Rehearsal is understood not as preparation for a perfected teacher-self, but as a practice of attending, imagining and responding responsibly to others. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148777 Title: Teatru Malta and the formation of a theatre culture Authors: Gatt, Isabelle Abstract: It is tempting, when speaking of a national theatre, to focus on what is produced: the plays staged, the actors employed, the audiences gathered. These matter. They are the visible articulation of a theatre’s presence in the life of a country. But they do not stand alone. What appears on stage is inseparable from the processes that shape it and from the ways it is received, read, and carried beyond the performance itself. Product and process are part of the same ecology. [excerpt] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148453 Title: Drama education in Malta : from theatre practice to pedagogical ecology in the Mediterranean Authors: Gatt, Isabelle Abstract: This chapter traces the development of drama education in Malta as an evolving, hybrid field shaped by the interplay of theatre practice, educational reform, and higher education. It begins with the establishment of formal theatre training through the Manoel Theatre Academy of Dramatic Art (MADC) in the late 1970s and examines the pioneering work of Adrian Rendle and Peter Cox. Their initiatives contributed to the emergence of drama-in-education practices and the formation of the Drama Unit. The chapter then follows the shift from theatre-based training towards the academic and pedagogical development of drama, marked by the introduction of Theatre Studies at the University of Malta in 1988 and subsequent developments in teacher education. These include the Postgraduate Certificate in Drama Education and, later, the MTL in Drama Education, which became the professional route to qualifying as a drama teacher in Malta. Particular attention is given to the distinctive character of Maltese drama education, which developed through an interaction between British drama-in-education traditions, Italian pedagogical influences, notably the work of Loredana Perissinotto and the AGITA network, and local educational and cultural conditions. Drawing on documentary sources, practitioner interviews, and a reflexive practitioner perspective grounded in the author’s professional involvement, the chapter examines how drama education expanded beyond theatre training and developed across schools, teacher education, community settings, and educational policy. It foregrounds the role of collaboration, practitioner networks, and practice-led innovation in shaping a specifically Maltese approach. Situated within the wider cultural and educational context of the Mediterranean, Malta is presented as a case study of how international traditions can be adapted through local practice to produce a responsive and evolving pedagogy with implications for creativity, cultural participation, and educational policy. 2027-01-01T00:00:00Z