Book review : Re-reading education policy and practice in small states : issues of size and scale in the emerging intelligent society and economy

Abstract

Research in small states, including educational research in small states, has been around for quite some time now; long enough to no longer merit being regarded as a topic that only recently has attracted the attention it deserves, contrary to what the two editors state in their introduction to this book (p. 23). This work has been going on since at least the mid-80s, particularly, as far as education goes, through the Commonwealth series of publications in the area spearheaded by M. Kazim Bacchus and Colin Brock’s 1987 volume The challenge of scale. It has certainly attracted the interest of a whole coterie of writers primarily from the United Kingdom such as Mark Bray, Michael Crossley and Terra Sprague, but which has extended to involve writers from the small states of the Commonwealth and beyond: David Atchoarena, Godfrey Baldacchino, Charles J. Farrugia and Didacus Jules, to name a few.