Call for Papers: From Silos to Synergy: Building a Culture of Shared Responsibility for Education 2027
The 6th Annual Symposium of the Institute for Education will be held on 21st October 2026. It will focus on the theme ‘From Silos to Synergy: Building a Culture of Shared Responsibility for Education’. Education is, at its heart, a shared endeavour. Across classrooms, schools, communities, and systems, educators, leaders, families, students, and partners work every day to create rich learning experiences and more just futures. Much of what is most powerful in education already happens when people come together – when teachers co-plan, when leaders listen, when students’ voices shape decisions, and when communities stand alongside schools.
From Silos to Synergy invites us to build on these strengths and explore how collaboration can be deepened, broadened, and made more sustainable. The symposium foregrounds shared responsibility as a way of organising our work so that no single actor; teacher, school leader, parent, policymaker, or researcher is left to carry the weight of educational quality and student success alone. At the same time, we recognise that educational work is still too often carried out in isolation: teachers behind classroom doors, departments with disconnected priorities, support services at the margins, and policy decisions that can feel distant from practice. This fragmentation limits our collective impact and places increasing strain on the wellbeing of educators, leaders, students, and families. The symposium therefore proposes a shift from silos to synergy by focusing on how cultures of collaboration, partnership, and distributed leadership can be intentionally cultivated. Such cultures are the conditions that allow school communities to protect and nurture the wellbeing of all stakeholders in sustainable ways. When schools and institutions align their efforts through coherent leadership, professional learning communities, inter-professional teams, student and parent voice, and research-informed decision making, they create structures that share cognitive, emotional, and practical load.
The Institute for Education Symposium 2026 invites contributions that examine how collaboration, partnership, and shared responsibility are enacted in concrete practices and policies across different educational levels and contexts. Proposals are being sought for individual paper presentations and poster presentations. Poster presentations are open to schools wishing to showcase good practices, and participating schools will be awarded vouchers for the school library and professional development opportunities for the educator.
A proposal may be submitted by an individual or by a group of authors. Accepted proposals will be invited to present their work at the Symposium and to develop it into a journal article for publication in the Malta Journal of Education following a peer-reviewed process. A proposal can be submitted by an individual or group of authors. Accepted papers and posters will be invited to present their research at the 6th Annual Symposium.
