Though teachers in schools are increasingly being asked to take responsibility for the education and training of prospective and practicing teachers, little empirical research has been undertaken into the support that they require to perform their duties effectively. This study provides an international needs analysis of the professional learning…

Despite the potential magnitude of the influence of teacher educators on school curriculum, Ball et al. (2011). Policy actors: Doing policy work in schools. "Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32"(4), 625-639. https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1080/01596306.2011.601565) argue that teacher educators are frequently excluded from…

Irish Further Education and Training (FET) is presently undergoing a period of transformation after years of experiencing issues related to identity and precarious employment, among others. This paper explores the experiences and motivations of 16 student teachers who, despite the sectoral challenges, have chosen to teach in FET as a second…

This study explores how a group of pre-service teachers in the second year of a pre-service teachers masters program - the Postgraduate Master of Education (PME) - understood and practised collaborative learning (CL). Conducted over a six-year period (2015-2021), the study used semi-structured interviews (n=14) and surveys (n=100) to shed light on…

Unethical behaviour has become an increasingly controversial issue in Higher Education institutes. There have been debates about the reasons for the increase in unethical behaviour. But many of those debates contain problems. A key problem has been the lack of empirical results about faculty members' perceptions of their role in the phenomenon,…

Through the lens of nineteenth-century Irish society and through an interrogation of the diaries of one of the first women professors appointed to the National University of Ireland, this article traces the entry of women into the professoriate in Ireland. The aim of the paper is to extend the map of the international research agenda which speaks…

As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to transfer teaching to online platforms, intricate questions in relation to remote teaching and learning dominate the discourse. Teacher educators (TEs) are now tasked with designing online modules, facilitating online learning, and providing direct instruction for…

This article overviews the contemporary context for teaching Religious Education (RE) in Ireland and profiles changing religious demographics in an increasingly secular context. It presents the findings of a two-year mixed-methods study undertaken in two third-level Catholic colleges in Ireland, investigating four hundred third-level Initial…

Current international policy documents on teacher education are peppered with the word partnership and there seems to be an assumption that there is a common agreement regarding understandings of 'partnership'. Traditionally the university has been the decisive voice in educational partnerships which has often led to a power differential as well…

The closure of schools across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to have a catastrophic impact on a fundamental pillar of initial teacher education: school placement. This paper maps a new "site" of professional practice for "school placement" called "Teacher Online Programme" (TOP) using Xu and…

Medical students increasingly utilize social media platforms to supplement their preclinical learning; however, the prevalence of social media use for physiology learning in medical education remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to determine how first-year medical students from both direct entry medicine and graduate entry medicine…

Research exploring the well-being and pastoral care of pupils attending primary and post-primary schools has become an issue of increased discourse and growing national and international concern in recent years. Society often expects that teachers can support or facilitate pupils experiencing such issues; however, there is little research that…

Academics in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE), similar to their counterparts in other disciplines, receive little formal preparation when they take on academic leadership positions. Yet such career changes require different skill sets and expose academics to complex challenges of leadership. We (three academics) initiated this study to…

Recent structural and conceptual changes to initial teacher education (ITE) in Ireland have impacted on the professional roles of many teacher educators. This study explores the perspectives and identity of seven placement tutors on the Professional Master of Education (PME) course in Maynooth University in relation to their role, past and…

Lesson study is a collaborative model of professional development that provides teachers with the opportunity to learn from the planning, conduction and reflection of a specifically designed research lesson. Lesson study is increasingly incorporated in initial teacher education (ITE) and calls have been made to further detail the lesson study…