This paper reflects on compulsory school self-evaluation in Ireland. It sets important historical and contemporary context by documenting the development of a culture of evaluation in Ireland throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium before charting the rise of school self-evaluation during the austere economic conditions of post-2008…

This article reports on a case study conducted in an urban post-primary school setting, which investigated a teaching and learning group, called a T&L Club, as a model of sustainable professional development for teachers. The group consisted of 18 members from a whole staff of 90 teachers and had been in existence for four years at the time of…

The study at the heart of this paper was conducted in 2017 to gather data on Irish post-primary teachers' conceptions of assessment at the time immediately following the introduction of a revised policy for assessment by the Department of Education and Skills (DES). Central to the reform policy was an increased emphasis on formative assessment and…

A post-structural approach to exploring identity is taken in this paper in that identity is considered here as being socially constructed through discourse, which has deep implications for the shaping of subjectivity and practice. Given both the potential academisation and Anglicisation of Irish schools, and the additional re-drawing of what…

Self-evaluation in inspection policy has become a global phenomenon. The idea is that it increases levels of teacher and school autonomy, wherein both schools and teachers have more ownership and responsibility over their work. In turn, such a process has allowed for greater accountability, which is then said to provide high quality education and,…

The study in this article involved a critical discourse analysis of five policy documents in relation to a curriculum reform proposed for lower secondary education in the Republic of Ireland. It examined the (re)positioning of governance in relation to curriculum and teacher education. Findings indicate a predominant clinical discourse closely…

Recent years have seen an increased focus on school accountability in Ireland and calls for greater use to be made of student achievement data for monitoring student outcomes. In this paper, it is argued that existing data-sets in Ireland offer limited potential for the value-added modelling approaches used for accountability purposes in many…

This paper critiques the impact of neo-liberalism on postprimary education, and in particular on the teaching of English. The paper explores the implications of performativity and exam-driven schooling on the teaching and learning of poetry. The authors argue that meeting the demands of an education system dominated by technicism and…

The Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society is now running in its thirteenth year. From its modest beginnings thirteen years ago, to its impressive size today, a tradition has been the production of a conference book, consistently launched on the first day of the conference each year. This year, Volume 13 of…

Problem Statement: This paper focuses on assessment in Irish education, which, despite best intentions, shepherds students through the process to an extent that the individual is prone to undervalue her/his ability to trust in the self as a rational, self-thinking individual. In Ireland's assessment system lies the paradox whereby from childhood…

The data for this paper were generated during a three-year, Participatory Action Research project, with 41 15-19-year-old female co-researchers and activists, within and beyond the walls of a secondary school. The purpose of the larger study was to work with these students to understand and transform their self-identified barriers to physical…

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a very personal series of reflections on the current debate on risk and accountability in child protection and child and youth care as the former strives to come out of a period of volunteerism and professionalize itself (McElwee, 1998; Share & McElwee, 2005). Irish culture has grown more individualist…