Before and during the era when mass elementary schooling took off, children populated classrooms in many roles and not only as learners. The traditional teaching situation was actually full of children in roles as instructors, inspectors, and helpers, among others. In this contribution, the dichotomisation of expected classroom roles, being a…

The years of the Second World War (1939-1945), a period known as The Emergency in Ireland, were pivotal for the development of the nation. Immediately after the outburst of the war in the continent, the Fianna Fáil cabinet led by Éamon de Valera declared the state of emergency and adopted a neutrality policy. Brian O'Nolan (1911-1966), better…

This paper discusses how major breakthroughs in generating, analysing and disseminating action research about problem-based learning were made through the medium of poetry. I used poetry in three ways: as data, as an interpretive device and as a reflective medium. Poetry helped me to disseminate my research in provocative, memorable and…

The making of human capital is increasingly seen as a principal function of higher education. A keyword in neoliberal ideology, human capital represents a subtle masking of social conflict and expresses metaphorically the commodification of human abilities and an alienating notion of human potential, both of which sit ill with the goals of…

The youth mentoring program Big Brothers Big Sisters is one of the first social interventions involving youth in Ireland to be evaluated using a randomized controlled trial methodology. This article sets out the design process undertaken, describing how the research team came to adopt a concurrent embedded mixed methods design as a means of…

This article outlines how I, as a primary teacher engaging with a self-study action research process, have come to a deeper understanding of my practice. It explains how I have also come to an understanding of why I work in the way I do; of how this understanding influences my work, and the significance of this new understanding. My work as a…

Inspired by poststructuralist insights and the critical literature on the topic of school-based sexuality education, this paper is derived from a close examination of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) resource materials devised for teachers involved in delivering the programme in Irish schools. It seeks critically to uncover how…