https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/3202 Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:28:47 GMT 2026-08-04T18:28:47Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148236 Title: Medical sciences in early modern Malta : Giuseppe Demarco on the use and abuse of chocolate in medicine (1760) Authors: Gatt, Jurgen R. Abstract: Medical Sciences in Early Modern Malta contains a first English translation of Dr. Giuseppe Demarco’s 1760 medical treatise Dissertation on Chocolate as well as related contributions by Charles Savona-Ventura, Charles Cassar, William Zammit, Judge Giovanni Bonello, Maria Giuliana Fenech, and Skye Vassallo. Written by one of Malta’s most voluminous writers and perceptive scholars, Demarco’s Dissertation is a treasure trove of scientific and medical thought current in Malta in the early modern period. This volume, which also features a commentary on the Latin text written by the editor, aims to introduce Dr Giuseppe Demarco (1718-1793) to a modern audience by placing his writings within the broader socio-political, rhetorical, historical, scientific and medical context of early modern Europe. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148236 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/129764 Title: Do dialogic teaching models always guarantee empowering the student’s voice in classroom dialogue? Authors: Debono, Mark J. Abstract: This paper challenges the prevailing assumption that dialogic teaching models always guarantee empowering the student’s voice. It shows that the strict adherence of classroom dialogue to the model’s protocol may inhibit the unique expression of students. In the first section, I discuss the aspect that every classroom dialogue is different from the other and, as such, cannot always be perceived as being produced solely from the parameters of dialogic teaching models. To substantiate this argument, I employ Derrida’s analysis of the example as a force that consistently exceeds the boundaries of the exemplary. The second section deals with the issue of how a classroom dialogue can effectively empower the student’s voice using a critical appropriation of the paradigmatic conditions of dialogic teaching. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of ethical responsibility as a process resulting from how we use something for a specific purpose, I point out that adoption and adaptation allow us to be more creative in our use of the protocols of dialogic teaching models for classroom dialogue. The concluding remarks again indicate the complexities of balancing pedagogical strategies between the hegemonic structuring of classroom dialogue from dialogic teaching models and the organic development of students’ voices. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/129764 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/116591 Title: Lessons on knowledge transmission from Plato’s allegory of the cave : the influence of reason and companionship on transmissive and participatory pedagogies Authors: Debono, Mark J. Abstract: In this paper, I show the ambiguities in the interpretations of Martin Heidegger and Alain Badiou of Plato’s allegory of the cave as an enlightening educational experience. In Heidegger’s interpretation, knowledge appears as a rational process that corrects the thinking of others. By his claim of an education by truths, Badiou prioritises, again, the Platonic event of knowledge. To indicate the limit of the rational process in these two interpretations of education, I introduce Jan Masschelein’s claim that knowledge transmission in Plato’s cave story can be seen as a process where the immanent experience of companionship comes before the instruction of knowledge. The arguments in this article will be discussed in a broader context that explains how transmissive and participatory pedagogies have been influenced by the view of education as a process of rationality and companionship, and how the various approaches have either constrained or broadened the learner’s perspective. Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/116591 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/116590 Title: Justice in dialogic education : the hegemonic use of “truth” in dialogue and its educational limits Authors: Debono, Mark J. Abstract: In the opening lines of his Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida presents the following questions: “Who would learn? From whom? To teach to live, but to whom? Will we ever know how to live and first of all what ‘to learn to live’ means? And why ‘finally’?” (1994, p. xvii). These questions besides giving us an idea about the dialogic nature of the teaching and learning processes, also reveal the complex issue of whether “truth” can be used as a criterion that determines the direction of the exchange of information in a final way. This thematic introduces the main currents of this chapter, which deal with a critique on how excessive authoritative positions of “truth” in dialogue/ dialectics can control what others say, where at times such a situation can end up in the worst-case scenario in which others are silenced. Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/116590 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z