Samuel Mallia was recently awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the Royal College of Music for his analytic work on educational policy and music education in Malta.
Mallia is an instrumental educator and performer who holds a diverse creative portfolio comprising solo and chamber work, as well as broader interdisciplinary and intercultural projects. Most notably, he currently forms part of UK saxophone ensemble the Laefer Quartet.
“I consider myself to be exceptionally lucky to have been afforded a vibrant spectrum of artistic opportunities in my artistic career so far. Alongside more conventional performance projects, I have collaborated with creative practitioners rooted in stylistic, cultural and disciplinary fields other than my own,” he said.
“These encounters offered me invaluable opportunities for growth. By revisiting what I know about music through other practitioners’ lenses, I have been able to see the shackles that inevitably accompany my own understandings, and bask in the exciting possibilities that lay beyond them.”
Mallia offers conceptual tools for Maltese educators and researchers to engage more critically with the kinds of music education offered
Mallia said these collaborative encounters formed the impetus for his doctoral research.
“I became sceptical of the music education I was exposed to earlier in my life and how it had formed the conceptual blinders I later sought to dismantle. Without discrediting conventional approaches to music education and the positive impacts they had on me, I became increasingly concerned about the restrictive impacts they carry.”
Over the past 30 years, educational researchers in the field of Western music education have questioned the scope, relevance and accessibility of these approaches, as well as their continued prevalence. However, despite mounting concerns relating to the position of music in formal education in Malta and the persistently low levels of student uptake at secondary, post-secondary and tertiary levels, critical analyses of music education in the local context have been few and far between.
Titled ‘Unsettling Necessities’, Mallia’s doctoral research offers an analysis of curricular policy and assessment documents shaping music educational provision in state secondary schools, with a particular focus on the various effects these carry for educators and learners.
Among other outcomes, his work highlights how the unquestioned presence of long-standing assumptions about what music is and how it should be learnt not only limits the creative possibilities afforded to learners, but more significantly acts as a tool for selection, differentiating access to music education according to children’s existing social, cultural and economic disposition.
In response, Mallia offers conceptual tools for Maltese educators and researchers to engage more critically with the kinds of music education offered, in the hope of pursuing more accessible, innovative and vibrant alternatives.
“My goal is to pursue an education that does not operate blindly on taken-for-granted and unmovable truths, but is informed by curious and rigorous analyses that do not shy away from multiplicity, encounter, and the creative possibilities these afford,” he says.
Mallia’s doctoral studies were supported by the Malta Arts Scholarship Scheme, financed by the Maltese government. His studies were also funded by the Janatha Stubbs Foundation and the BOV Joseph Calleja Foundation. Mallia is also grateful to Mary Stakelum, Jessica Pitt and the late Ronald Sultana, who shared their academic expertise, insights and pastoral support.
Mallia currently works as a freelance instrumental music educator, teaching at secondary, post-secondary and extra-curricular levels in London. He is regularly contributes to the delivery and development of music education modules at the Royal College of Music and provides educational services to the Institute for Education in Malta, and the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST).
Mallia is also the editorial assistant for the Routledge journal Music Education Research.
In parallel to his academic work, Mallia regularly performs with chamber ensembles in the UK and Malta. On November 21, he will be performing with the Melika Quartet for the ConTempo Music Festival, hosted by the Malta Society of Arts.