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This paper draws on the fund of regional knowledge about career guidance that comparative research has generated in the "global South". The goal of the paper is to add another voice to the challenge to the universalising language that characterises career guidance theory and practice, and to further highlight the serious attention that needs to be given to "localisms" and "particularisms" so that responses that are sensitive to context can emerge. While several authors make a case for attention to context, few explicitly link epistemological and ontological concerns to the issue of political power. In contrast, in this paper I argue that inductive theorising is more likely to not only generate relevant and useful knowledge and practices: it is also more likely to serve the interests of social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a scoping approach to the issue of career guidance in multicultural societies. It starts off by exploring the meaning of ‘culture’, moving away from ‘back-pack’ approaches that consider culture as a set of worldviews and dispositions that are readily shed or put on, to anthropological understandings of culture as deeply held ways of meaning making that permeate all levels of one’s life and one’s relationship with others. Such complex approaches to culture challenge career guidance workers to problematise notions they hold of themselves and of others, and to face up to the challenge of alterity. In effecting this troubling reaching inwards and reaching outwards, and in striving for the epiphany of ‘knowing’, a number of pitfalls need to be acknowledged and overcome. These include our own incipient monoculturalism, the romanticisation, essentialisation and exoticisation of culture, as well as restricted notions of equality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article sets out to trigger research and policy attention among the career guidance community to the increasingly important notion of ‘flexicurity’. It first explores the different meanings of the term, particularly as these have evolved in discussions across the European Union. It then goes on to consider why ‘flexicurity’ has attracted so much policy interest, particularly in its promise to both support labour market competitiveness and increase economic efficiency on the one hand, while protecting the interests of workers on the other. Next, the article documents some of the key debates around the notion of flexicurity, highlighting the fact that any consideration of ‘flexicure’ arrangements needs to be empirically grounded in time and space, and carefully contextualised. The article concludes by making a series of critical reflections on the need to ‘insert’ career guidance in the European discourse on ‘flexicurity’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Blueprint framework for career management skills as it has been revealed across sequential implementations in the USA, Canada and Australia. It is argued that despite its lack of an empirical basis, the framework forms a useful and innovative means through which career theory, practice and policy can be connected. The framework comprises both core elements (learning areas, learning model and levels) and contextual elements (resources, community of practice, service delivery approach and policy connection). Each of these elements is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages in a series of critical self-reflections on the author's involvement in the spate of career guidance reviews that have taken place since the year 2000, and which were commissioned by such supra-national entities as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and various agencies and directorates of the European Commission. The author argues that this series of overlapping comparative studies - involving 55 countries in all - constitutes a powerful discursive field that has helped to frame career guidance in particular ways, and that it has led to opportunities for policy lending and policy borrowing on an unprecedented scale. The author examines the dynamics of such policy learning, identifying some of its potential motives as well as key mechanisms by which transfers take place through 'push' and 'pull' forces. He then goes on to raise a series of questions regarding the viability of deterritorialised policy exchange, noting that social practices such as career guidance are inscribed in a particular complex of values, meanings, and significations that are tightly coupled to the ecological climate in which they thrive. Drawing on his experience in the Middle East and North Africa, the author reflects on career guidance in Arab countries in order to illustrate the way transnational, globalised agendas are reconfigured and reinterpreted at the local level. The paper concludes by considering the ethical and epistemological responsibilities that need to be confronted by 'boundary persons' who mediate between the global and the local. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on major research findings in international literature in order to provide a critical review of a number of key issues and trends in the initial education of high school teachers. Firstly, this paper contextualizes the prevalent discourse surrounding the field of initial teacher education (ITE) and explores the effect that this discourse has on the conceptualization of teachers' work. Secondly, this paper focuses on the debates regarding the most propitious site for the teacher education enterprise, the programme structure for ITE, the field placement or practicum, the relationship between subject study and pedagogy, and the overall effectiveness of teacher education. The paper concludes by considering the new challenges that the field of initial teacher education must confront and the implications of such challenges for the ITE curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major developments within the sociology of education is the recovery of the role of human agency within what had previously been considered to be determining structures This article looks at one aspect of such agency, namely the meaning production engaged in by a group of largely working-class students within transition programmes in three secondary schools in New Zealand Their contestual industry in receiving, reinterpreting, re-creating and rejecting meanings provides valid spaces in which critical and conscientising education can occur It as argued, however, that this same activity hardly warrants the optimism evident in contemporary educational discourse relating progressive change at the micro-level of the school to changes in the larger social formation. Some of the factors which subvert the transformative potential of contestual and resistant activity are therefore explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the education system in Malta. Features identifying the Maltese educational system; Overview of the assessment system; Information on the secondary school examinations; Examination in small states.

The article focuses on making a case for the recognition of the European Union (EU) as an influential supranational actor in the field of education. The European Union's activities constitute a relatively new influence on educational policy-making. It has generally been argued that this influence is both weak and politically progressive. It is purported to be weak because member states are supposed to jealously guard the autonomy of their national education systems. Despite the fact that the EU has no direct state capability, it is nevertheless an important social actor in a number of fields, including not only economics, finance and politics, but social policy, policy making and education as well. A highly sophisticated network of information about education systems and policies has been set up in the European Community, with the view of "developing exchanges of information and experience on issues common to the education systems of the member states." This has fanned hopes of utilizing educational Europe as a "rich thesaurus of case studies, ready for exploitation." While the Community emphasizes the autonomy of member states in most matters related to education, increasingly European ministers of education meet to discuss the same situations and preoccupations, aim at the same goals, follow similar directions, and adopt similar policies.

This article gives an account of the formation of a social movement of teachers in Malta. Malta lies awkwardly, geographically, politically and culturally, between two worlds. Its small size and almost absolute lack of natural resources make it a conditioned state and while since its independence from Great Britain in 1964 it has built up its own form of state capitalism, it is still heavily reliant on investment by foreign industrialists who are attracted by low labour costs, a relatively docile workforce, and financial incentives such as tax holidays and low rental costs for factory units. Maltese teachers are exposed to a critical language from a number of faculty staff, both in philosophy and in sociology of education, with compulsory courses in critical theory, two compulsory courses on education and democracy, and a number of optional courses on gender and class related issues. The Muviment Edukazzjoni Umana would create a forum for teachers to discuss education in Malta from a normative point of view. It would serve as a support group for those teachers who did not wish to become incorporated by the utilitarian and technocratic, examination and achievementacentred ideology of schooling in Malta.

Examines the Mediterranean Education Project (MEP). Importance of having a project on education in the Mediterranean Region; Features of the region; Description of the conditions in the region's educational system; Features of the project.

Focuses on the role of teachers' work in a uniting Europe to argue that teachers' work addresses similar issues worldwide. International economic context of education; Capitalist influence on education.

Studies the rationale behind a personal and social education (PSE) initiative in Malta. Social contexts of PSE; Maltese contexts of PSE; Importation of curriculum for PSE in Malta; Problems with the way PSE has been promoted in Malta; Curriculum construction of PSE; Developed curriculum of PSE; Conclusions.

The kinds of messages teachers give students regarding the value of credentials in the job-getting package during a period of high youth unemployment are explored. The response made by students to the credentialling ideology promoted in schools, and their construction of the job-getting formula, are also described. The validity of the two versions of job-getting strategies is considered in the light of evidence provided by a number of empirical research projects. The superiority of student knowledge in this area is used to present a case for a critical and democratic education which appropriates and legitimises the student voice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The major aim of this article is to explore the potential of teachers as transformative agents within schools. The study first looks at theoretical perspectives which analyse both the class location of teachers as well as the kinds of relationships and structural constraints into which they enter ‐‐ both in their pre‐service training, and throughout their work as teachers. The paper then presents ethnographic data to argue that despite the overwhelming and hegemonic restraints on teachers, when they, individually and/or collectively, are inspired by social movements outside of the school, then total institutional and ideological incorporation is less likely to take place. Case studies are presented to illustrate how such politicized teachers and schools struggle to establish a space in favour of progressive and democratic agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the demands that employers make on education in the context of the Mediterranean micro‐state of Malta. It first of all provides a profile of the employing class on the island, and describes the mechanisms that employers use in order to influence educational policy‐making. The expectations that industrialists have from schooling, in terms of a range of desiderata that include knowledge, attitudes and skills, are examined on both technical and normative grounds. Particular attention is paid to the sets of motives that underlie employers’ demands, and whether these stand in conflict with the goals that educators aim for. Throughout the article, an attempt is made to connect the Maltese situation with that obtaining in other countries, while remaining sensitive to the specificity imposed by Malta's geographic location, scale, and economic status as a peripheral, intermediately developed post‐colonial society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The problem of child labour is widespread in Malta, despite the fact that there is compulsory schooling up to the age of 16, and even although most of the necessary formal legislative measures to combat the employment of children have been taken. Data is presented in order to provide a clear picture of the extent of the problem, as well as of the general conditions which prevail in the ‘twilight economy’ in which child workers labour. Economic and socio‐cultural reasons which could explain the continuing practice of child labour in Malta are explored, and general policy recommendations made. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study records messages given to students about work within three high schools in New Zealand. Attention was given to overt and covert messages, and to those messages embedded in the structure of schooling itself. The study contributes to the debate within the ‘new’ sociology of education in that it focuses on the relationship between schooling and the established order in society. The data collected show that generally, the form, con tent and pedagogy of schooling function to serve the needs of industry rather than those of democracy. While teachers are described as functioning in the reproductive mode, the contradictions and conflicts observed are highlighted to show that reproduction does not take place without contestation. This opens up spaces wherein students and teachers can exercise agency and autonomy to question ‐‐and formulate alternatives to ‐‐the structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper sets out to explore the contribution that Dun Gorg Preca made to the development of adult education in the Maltese islands. Preca's achievements are situated historically in order to highlight more effectively his relevance to the development of the field. Qualities underlined in this account are Preca's commitment to the democratization of knowledge, his stance vis‐à‐vis the learner, opting to reach out to communities and to work at the grass roots rather than the formal institutional level, and his conviction that difficult knowledge, often used as a positional good by status groups, can, given the right pedagogical approach, be communicated to all learners, whatever their social and educational background. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents one approach to the development of initial teacher education programmes that are based on a vision, premissed on values shared consensually by faculty staff and students. The article first provides a brief historical background of the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta, where this values‐based approach was attempted. It addresses some of the key problems faced in the development of a coherent and organic course of studies with students following graduate and post‐graduate courses, and gives an account of the way some of these problems were addressed. It is claimed that the approach adopted at the University of Malta can help other teacher educators in clarifying objectives as they set out to create coherent programmes that provide a sense of mission based on identifiable values and principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the book "Education, Globalization and the Nation State," by Andy Green. The book prunes the excesses of proponents of postmodernism and globalization. The new and undeniable global reality of economic and social interdependence and interpenetration has fostered as many new roles for states as it has foreclosed old ones. The state is not an anachronistic construct, slowly receding into history. It argues that the most economically and culturally successful nation states have carefully and strategically deployed centralized state education as an invaluable tool of nation building, and should continue to do so. It points to the contingencies of state formation and the historical decisions and accidents that have allowed states to be realized in particular ways and not others. The state planning of education systems needs to take place on two fronts, the economic and the cultural. It has failed more clearly in terms of the latter. This failure to maintain social cohesion threatens to cripple civil democracies.