We are delighted to publish this thoughtful and insightful blog ‘From Malta to Denver – an ECR View on Reform, Context, and Why BELMAS Matters’ by Heathcliff Schembri.
In this blog, Heathcliff considers what it means to carry the voice of a small island and the role BELMAS has played in enabling this researcher to amplify his research internationally.
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What does it mean to carry the voice of a small island onto one of the world’s biggest stages for education research? In April 2025, I presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, as part of the BELMAS symposium titled ‘Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Education Renewal – Thoughts from an Educational Leadership Perspective on the UK’s Colonial Legacy.’ As an Early Career Researcher (ECR) from Malta, the experience was more than a presentation slot; it became an opportunity to bring small-state realities, colonial legacies and leadership practices into global dialogue.
Reform, Agency and the Syntax of Policy
My doctoral research examined Malta’s Learning Outcomes Framework (LOF) as a case of policy reform that promises learner agency yet is enacted within a longstanding policy language and set of organising rules that privilege central prescription, performativity and inspection-driven accountability over professional discretion. In text, the LOF aligns with formative assessment and curriculum-as-process traditions, drawing on foundational work by Stenhouse (1975) and Black and Wiliam (1998), while also resonating with more recent policy-facing interpretations of formative practice and curriculum coherence (Myatt, 2016; Wiliam, 2018).
In practice, however, many leaders and teachers in my study reported what I conceptualised as ‘administrative density’: more forms and checklists, heightened evidence demands and tighter compliance requirements, rather than deeper professional judgement (Schembri, 2025). This dynamic is not unique to Malta. Audit cultures frequently reward what is easily verifiable rather than what most meaningfully supports learning (Ball, 2003). Alignment at the level of policy rhetoric does not necessarily translate into enactment practices that reflect either original theoretical intent or contemporary reinterpretations (Schembri, 2025) .
Between Text and Practice
A policy-enactment lens helps to explain this disjuncture. Policies do not travel intact from centres of governance to classrooms; they are interpreted, translated and negotiated by actors in situated contexts (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012). In my study, educators frequently engaged in forms of institutional resistance by performing surface compliance while protecting core pedagogical routines (Schembri, 2025). Rather than cynicism, these actions reflected rational adaptation to an environment where professional risk-taking could threaten standing in a small system (Bray & Packer, 1993; Crossley, 2010).
As I argued at the BELMAS symposium, the issue is not outcomes per se, but the framework through which outcomes are made to count. Small-state and postcolonial perspectives sharpen this critique. Malta’s reform story sits within a longer arc of imported models and epistemic hierarchies that privilege external templates over locally authored pedagogy (Smith, 2012). If “decolonization is not a metaphor” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 1), then remedy and repair require more than technical adjustments. They demand what might be termed pedagogical sovereignty, a redistribution of curriculum authority towards practitioner–community design. This rebalancing towards professional agency resonates with Malta’s leadership scholarship on schools as professional learning communities (Bezzina & Testa, 2005) and aligns with international arguments for collaborative professionalism, where teachers exercise collective responsibility and informed judgement (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012; Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2018; Timperley, 2011).
From Denver to Dialogue: What BELMAS Made Possible
For an ECR, AERA’s scale can be overwhelming; BELMAS made it intelligible and purposeful. More importantly, the symposium positioned my work within a community of educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA) researchers, where ideas could be tested, contested and strengthened through collegial exchange. It affirmed the value of research from small systems: scale does not diminish significance when context illuminates globally relevant dynamics (Crossley, 2010; Bray & Packer, 1993).
Beyond the symposium, I participated in parallel events on leadership, decoloniality and democratic renewal where rigorous research connected evidence to structures enabling leaders and teachers to act. Such engagement sharpened my understanding of leadership as relational and context-sensitive work rather than positional authority, particularly within small and postcolonial systems where risk, visibility and responsibility are tightly interwoven.
BELMAS’s support extended beyond the stage. As a small-state researcher, I am acutely aware of the ethical demands of working where “everyone knows everyone”: anonymity, traceability and research fatigue are persistent concerns (Schembri & Sciberras, 2020). Being part of a society that recognises these constraints and offers communities such as research interest groups (RIGs) and conferences is invaluable. In leadership terms, such spaces operate as a form of network leadership, where knowledge is jointly shaped across institutions and career stages . A place of collaborative professionalism (Hargreaves and O’Connor, 2018) , in which improvement depends on shared responsibility, collective judgement and disciplined dialogue rather than individualised best practice performed in isolation.
If you are an ECR wondering whether BELMAS is for you, my answer is unequivocal: yes. BELMAS offers touchpoints that matter: peer communities through RIGs, opportunities to publish and present, supportive webinars, and constructive, developmental feedback. It opens routes into mentoring, collaborative writing and society roles that build visibility and leadership capacity.
Acknowledgement: I am grateful to BELMAS for support through its ECR fund, which facilitated my participation at AERA 2025.
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Schembri, H. and Sciberras, C. (2020) ‘Ethical considerations and limitations when researching education in small island states’, SENTIO, 2, 42–47.
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Wiliam, D. (2018). Creating the schools our children need: Why what we’re doing now won’t help much (and what we can do instead). London: Learning Sciences International.
