‘De-learning, to learn again’ : towards a critical environmental pedagogy in Malta

Abstract

This research is a qualitative inquiry into the history and current characteristics of environmental education in Malta. As a former British colony, Malta’s curriculum, including environmental education, was heavily influenced by the British standardized curriculum until the 1990s. Existing literature suggests that this may have functioned to de-center generational place-based knowledge and highlight the environmental knowledge and ideologies of a colonizing group. However, there is a gap in the literature that recognizes environmental education as a contested field in Malta and other post-colonial regions. In this research, I use semi-structured interviews to explore educators’ experience with environmental teaching in the formal education system in Malta. As indicated in the results, participants identified several challenges to environmental education in Malta, including limitations of the formal education system, structural factors influencing teacher agency and environmental attitudes, and perceived nature disconnectedness. I interpret these results through a lens of critical pedagogy and post-colonial theory, suggesting that influences of colonialism might still be reflected in present-day environmental education, through a lasting impact of colonial curricula and a sense of disconnection with natural spaces. I suggest that there is reason to reconsider environmental education as a ‘neutral’ field in Malta, and that a critically-informed environmental pedagogy has the potential to become a site of critique, resistance, and action. I conclude with ideas for what this pedagogy might look like, built on insights from critical pedagogy, post-colonial theory, and the experiences of educators who participated in this research.