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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.

Examines employers' expectations and demands for education in Malta and their underlying motives of status differentiation and worker socialization. Suggests ways in which educators can evaluate and respond to these demands. (SK)

Discusses the formation of a teachers' movement in Malta. Describes organizational goals such as developing participatory democracies in school communities, working as pressure groups to influence educational policy making, and linking humanistic perspectives with a critical theory of schooling. Suggests that change occurs through dramatizing social issues, creating normative change, and bringing about structural change. (DK)

The article explores the contribution of education on social cohesion in the democratic society of the Mediterranean state of Malta. Malta is clearly and visibly geographically bounded and contained. The small island state gives its citizens a sense of unity, of belonging to the same collectivity. Given the scale of the island, formal education has little difficulty in reaching all students and to effectively expose them to an integrative narrative that schools them into citizenship. Malta's education system has singularly failed to rise to this challenge, remaining generally insensitive to the differentiated needs of learners, while at the same time failing to guarantee equality of outcomes. Maltese schools exclude categories of students by failing to recognise that there are differences between learners. Streaming on the basis of ability commences at the end of the fourth year of primary schooling, with children sitting annual, centrally set examinations that often determine a pupil's educational and occupational future. A consideration of the exclusionary mechanisms at work in Malta's educational system has shown that while equality of access might have been achieved, much has still to be done in ensure three other forms of equality, that of survival, of output, and of outcome.

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.

Focuses on Malta's reform of vocational education following the advent of the socialist government in 1971. Aims of the reform program; Failure of the country to bridge the gap between intellectual and manual labor.

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.