Fifty Maltese children, 25 in the second year of pre-school (4 years olds) and 25 in the first year of compulsory education (5 years old), were interviewed about their knowledge of plants. Analysis showed that they had a restricted understanding of the term, meaning something small, with a thin stalk, leaves and a flower. Trees, cacti and nettles were not classified as plants. Children's knowledge was observed to increase with age. Parents were identified as the main source of knowledge; schools were rarely mentioned. Maltese teachers should be made aware of children's limited knowledge about plants and they need to use readily available resources in schools to expose pre-school children to the plants in their immediate surroundings.

The scientific community has provided a wide range of evidence that family and community involvement in schools benefits not only students’ learning but also their surrounding community. The INCLUD‐ED project has conducted case studies of successful schools around Europe that have strong community participation. Some of them are engaged in the Learning Communities project, an international project of educational and social transformation aimed at overcoming school failure. Through these case studies, INCLUD‐ED has gone beyond the state of the art in the field and has provided a classification of types of family and community participation and identified forms of involvement that improve students’ academic achievement. This article presents the benefits of those forms of participation and focuses on some forms of community involvement in the Learning Communities that have been found to improve students’ school learning and other education‐related aspects, such as living together.

While it is widely acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has created disruptions in children’s learning trajectories, the literature suggests that there is little empirical research to support th... What is already known about this topic: Learning is associated with better life outcomes.Home and school environments provide children with a variety of learning opportunities.The COVID-19 pandemic...

Young Maltese children have experience and knowledge of animals. We explored the range of animal with which they are familiar and the origin of this knowledge. The children interviewed were in Pre School, aged 4 years, and in the first year of compulsory education, aged 5 years Verb l questions...

2010 sees the end of the process of establishing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Although not all countries may have achieved all the objectives, many are those countries and universities who have implemented many of the targets set. Within the Bologna Process, there have been many developments such as: European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) for the transfer of period of study abroad; joint degrees; and quality assurance aspects among others. Guidelines for Quality Assurance and the development of an overarching European Qualifications Framework have been developed. While the Bologna Process brings with it many advantages on an education level, the discussion has not really considered the legal aspects of such a system. Once the EHEA is implemented comprehensively across Europe, situations may arise which would require universities to consider the legal aspects of learning that students may have experienced within different tertiary institutions. This paper considers what problems may arise, for example with fraudulent behaviour by students in the acquisition of ECTS credits in another university; with weaknesses or failure to prove quality of learning following an external quality assurance audit in another university; with the failure to deliver learning by one of the partner universities running joint degrees etc., and explores the possible legal implications of such situations as well as identifying the legal lacunae which exist and which need to be taken into consideration if the EHEA is to maintain the reputation that it aims for.