Cultivating a European identity among EU citizens through education : Malta's educational curriculum

Abstract

This dissertation explores the relationship between European identity formation and education. Due to the complexity of both variables, the research had to be narrowed down to one of the EU member states - the educational curriculum of Malta. In order to comprehend how the Maltese Secondary Educational Curriculum (SEC) cultivates a sense of European identity among students, a mix of primary and secondary sources were utilised. A qualitative content analysis approach was adopted and it was also complimented with a series of data coding. The content analysis and data coding were used to gain as much information as possible from the main primary sources – the SEC syllabi from 1994 to 2020. The patterns which emerged from the aforementioned research methods intended to provide how education correlates with European identity formation. Such patterns provided the basis for the analysis on this research area. The main findings coincided with the academic literature and already established theories all of which helped in the answering of the research question. This dissertation provides the academic world with the credible possibility that there in fact exists a relationship between education and European identity formation and the opportunity for future research on the topic.