Malta : GIS and geography teaching in the context of educational reform

Abstract

Malta is made up of three inhabited islands with a total area of 316 km2 and a population of just over 400,000. The population density is over 1,200 persons per square kilometer, making it the country with the highest population density in Europe and one of the highest in the world (National Statistics Office, 2009). This demographic situation is partly attributed to the strategic position of the islands in the central Mediterranean. Figure 18.1 shows the position of Malta as the southernmost boundary of Europe and in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The chronological timeline later displayed in Table 18.1 shows the continuous interests for the islands to be governed by a series of occupiers as an indication of the archipelago’s strategic value. However, it was during the tenure by the Knights of St John and the British that contributed to the population growth and the development of the educational system along southern European lines in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and along British lines from the nineteenth century. As a result, most Maltese can now speak fluently and write in the native Semitic tongue, in Romance Italian, and in Anglo-Saxon English.