Daniel Xerri

University of Malta · Centre for Academic Literacies and English Communication Skills (C-ALECS)

Several studies have concluded that the teaching profession is characterized by high occurrences of emotional exhaustion and burnout. These conditions very often lead to low levels of wellbeing in teachers and constitute a major concern for the profession. Teachers who experience low levels of wellbeing are much more likely to suffer from mental he...

The article explores the perceptions of English language teachers in Malta with respect to native English-speaking teachers. It discusses the results of a small-scale study involving interviews with teachers working in a boutique English language school. Although the participants acknowledge English’s global significance, the idea of NS supremacy p...

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid transition to emergency remote teaching (ERT) in schools around the world. This small-scale study examines English language teachers' experiences of ERT in Malta and the way they navigated the challenges posed by this unexpected situation. By means of the findings that emerged through the use of a question...

Mindsets have an important bearing on the personal and professional development of language teachers. Educators with growth mindsets believe in the malleability of their qualities, whereas those with fixed mindsets assume that their skills and performance cannot change. Besides having the right kind of mindset, language teachers also require a numb...

Three-time Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is one of the US’ most important contemporary poets. In this interview, he talks about his formation as a poet and the status of poetry in contemporary culture. He also shares his views on the place of poetry in education, and on how teachers can play a vital role in engaging young people with the genre. Besid...

In the digital age, multimodal storytelling is a versatile approach to the traditional way of telling stories. One of its key features is the harnessing of a range of multimedia tools for an immersive experience that brings narratives to life. This chapter explores creative ways in which language teachers can integrate collaborative multimodal stor...

Critical thinking is considered one of the most significant competencies that employees need to develop in order for them to contribute to an organisation’s success and productivity. The lack of professional development opportunities aimed at enhancing the critical thinking capacity of employees might be deleterious for organisations seeking to cap...

Continuing professional development (CPD) involves a broad range of activities by means of which language teachers develop their beliefs, knowledge and skills. While traditionally CPD has consisted primarily of a trainer-to-trainee dynamic, other forms of professional development that entail a higher degree of autonomy and collaboration on the part...

The introductory chapter highlights the benefits for early English language learning of making connections to wider educational approaches and contributing to a departure from applied linguistics and second language acquisition. Drawing on recent research into lived experiences of innovative practices in early years and primary school settings, the...

This chapter discusses how the inadequacies of a general spoken English proficiency component for pre-service teachers were addressed by means of the design and implementation of a spoken proficiency test that incorporates teacher discourse as one of its assessment criteria. The assessment of teacher discourse is shown to be an appropriate means of...

Research engagement on the part of teachers consists of two main activities. Teachers engage with research when they critically read, listen to, and discuss the research published by academics or other teachers. They engage in research when they plan, undertake and reflect upon research projects in their own contexts.

Built on the premise that TESOL professionals require practice in engaging in research as part of teacher development programmes, this chapter describes a practicum that MA TESOL students in Malta complete by doing fieldwork at a school. Fieldwork is here understood as research in the context in which school leaders, teachers, and learners operate....

As many societies evolve into multicultural entities consideration needs to be given to the challenges and opportunities associated with teaching English within a multilingual context. By means of a study conducted at a primary school in Malta, this article discusses the beliefs and experiences of a group of teachers adapting to a new classroom rea...

Sites associated with the dark and literary aspects of tourism can prove beneficial to travellers since they can play an educational role while instigating an emotional and intellectual response. This article illustrates how a tour to the Isle of the Dead at Port Arthur in Tasmania provided the nescient traveller with insights into the literary and...

Teacher involvement in High-Stakes language testing is a beneficial enterprise for different stakeholders. Test designers and examination bodies benefit from teachers’ knowledge of the content, context and cohort. Teachers not only have a good degree of knowledge of the language that is being assessed, but they are also immersed in the context that...

Despite posing a number of benefits, teacher research might be something classroom practitioners avoid engaging in due to inadequate research literacy. Part of this literacy consists of the knowledge and skills required to use popular research methods. Given that teachers might find it useful to read about how their peers have attempted to use such...

Teacher research is lauded as a beneficial enterprise both for practitioners and for learners. However, teachers are sometimes accused of not possessing the necessary knowledge and skills to conduct research effectively. This article focuses on the need for teacher-researchers to find means of addressing the methodological challenges of engaging in...

This book advocates that teachers should play an active role in high-stakes language testing and that more weight should be given to teacher judgement. This is likely to increase the formative potential of high-stakes tests and provide teachers with a sense of ownership. The implication is that the knowledge and skills they develop by being involve...

Developing the knowledge, skills and beliefs that teachers and students require in order to write poetry is a powerful means of deepening their engagement with the genre. Based on an interview with Red Room Poetry's Artistic Director, this article examines how the organisation is having an impact on poetry education in Australia.

Spoken word poetry is recognised as a potent means of enabling young people to express themselves and explore their vulnerability. Based on an interview with the Australian poet Candy Royalle, this article examines her views in relation to spoken word poetry’s capacity to combat voice poverty in young people. Royalle stresses the importance of embe...

Nurturing young people’s creativity seems to have become one of the foremost goals of education over the past few years. However, a minimal amount of attention is paid to the challenges that teachers face in achieving this goal in the classroom. In this interview-based article, children’s author Libby Gleeson indicates that while an assessment-driv...

Teacher research is described as being beneficial and yet it is hampered by teachers' lack of knowledge about research, including how to use popular research methods. Given that accounts by teachers describing their use of such methods in a systematic manner might prove useful for their peers, this article describes my experience of using a questio...

This article examines how a project in Northern Ireland seeks to inspire young people to be creative through the placement of poets in schools. Based on an interview with the project co-ordinator, the article explores how the project seeks to nurture young people’s poetry writing and why it gives a lot of importance to the publication and performan...

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

This is a feature in which individuals are invited to express their personal, and sometimes controversial, views on professional issues. These views are not necessarily those of the Editor, the Editorial Panel, or the Publisher. Reaction to Comment features is welcome in the form of a letter to the Editor or a Readers Respond article.

This article considers the influence that assessment exerts on poetry education. By means of research conducted in a post-16 educational context in Malta, it shows that teachers’ and students’ practices in the poetry lesson are determined by the kind of examinations that candidates sit for. When the mode of assessment is constituted solely by the t...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the beliefs and experiences of a group of teachers endeavouring to enhance their students’ learning of English while adapting to a multicultural classroom reality. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on the results of a case study involving a number of semi-structured interviews. Findings The paper il...

Following the introduction of print portfolios for teacher development in the ELT sector in Malta, this article discusses the findings of a small-scale study that highlighted teachers’ views in relation to the possible future implementation of e-portfolios. It shows that while aware of the benefits of this tool, teachers have concerns about their o...

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

This article provides an insight into the work of the Sydney Story Factory, a creative writing centre for young people. Based on an interview with the centre's Storyteller-in-Chief, it shows how the Sydney Story Factory seeks to maximise the attention given to each student's creative output. In the article it is argued that the innovative approache...

Spoken word poetry is a means of engaging young people with a genre that has often been much maligned in classrooms all over the world. This interview with the Australian spoken word poet Luka Lesson explores issues that are of pressing concern to poetry education. These include the idea that engagement with poetry in schools can be enhanced by put...

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

Interviews in qualitative research may sometimes employ stimulus material as a means of eliciting richer data. However, scant consideration has been given to the use of poetry for this purpose, especially within the field of poetry education research. This article seeks to address the gap in the literature by illustrating how the use of poetry as i...

This article explores teachers’ beliefs and attitudes in relation to the implementation of portfolios and their contribution to professional development in Malta. Based on the results of a mixed methods study, the article demonstrates that in order for the implementation of a portfolio system to cultivate professional development teachers’ beliefs...

In this article, the authors consider how to use poetry to develop empathy for asylum seekers among students in Malta, where asylum seeking is a present and divisive issue.

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

This article explores the views of children's poet Michael Rosen in relation to poetry in education. It is based on an interview in which Rosen not only discusses the significance of encouraging young people to engage with poetry at school but also analyzes a number of threats to poetry's place in the English curriculum. This article identifies par...

Revolving around an interview with the contemporary children’s poet Michael Rosen, this article examines some of the potential effects of teachers’ attitudes toward poetry. The interview explores Rosen’s views on teachers’ attitudes toward poetry and the implications of such attitudes on students’ engagement with poetry. This article argues that te...

This article discusses how poetry allowed a first-time traveler to three different cities to explore each place and his identity as a traveler. Focusing on Istanbul, Sarajevo, and Bratislava, the article describes the experience of using a poem the traveler finds in each city to serve as a guide to its spirit. By referring to issues related to anth...

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

This paper discusses the role of literary theory within the teaching of poetry by focusing on post-16 education in Malta as a case study. Literary theory was meant to lead to a rethinking of the way poetry is approached in the A-level English classroom, but this failed to really come about due to the fact that it has not been adopted by syllabus de...

Assessment is most often held responsible for teachers' and students' mechanical approach to poetry in class. This article shows how examination pressure leads a group of poetry teachers and A Level English students at a post-16 college in Malta to perpetuate an approach to poetry that is characterised by an emphasis on finding hidden meaning. Howe...

On the basis of the results of a study conducted amongst secondary school teachers of English in Malta, this chapter explores the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for professional development purposes. In the digital era, SNS provide teachers with the opportunity of creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN), which is an increasingly significan...

This paper examines the place of poetry writing in the post-16 English curriculum in Malta. In presenting the results of a small-scale study adopting a mixed methods approach, it explores the views of teachers, students and an influential examiner. The paper proposes that while there seems to be an appreciation of what creative writing can contribu...

This article discusses the relationship between poetry and liminal places and revolves around an interview with the British poet John Rice. Rice is a children's poet and for a time he occupied the post of Glasgow's subway poet-in-residence. The interview explores the educational implications of such a post and examines Rice's views on children's cr...

This article explores the use of Dogme with postsecondary ESL students in a mainstream educational institution. By means of a small-scale action research study it was found that in spite of its reputation for being somewhat unconventional, Dogme can also be incorporated in an exam preparation course and allow students to benefit not only from the i...

Current language teaching pedagogy seems to give a lot of weight to the use of authentic materials. This article describes how a group of bilingual postgraduate students were assisted in improving their writing skills in English by means of a pedagogical approach that utilized a wide variety of texts published online. It discusses the methodology u...

This article discusses the theoretical concepts underpinning a multimodal approach to poetry teaching and considers a number of ways in which this can be adopted in practice. It discusses what is entailed by the concept of multimodality and examines the claims made about the benefits of employing a multimodal approach. It reviews the literature on...

This article describes how some basic tenets of shared writing can be applied to a class of 16-year-old L2 speakers of English preparing for a high stakes examination in which poetry is assessed by means of the traditional critical response. It examines how by means of this technique students who have never written any poetry can develop the confid...