The development of a National Framework for Quality in early childhood care and education in Ireland is the main focus of the work of the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education. A central element of the brief for this groundbreaking initiative is that it must have relevance for all settings where children aged birth to six are…

This paper describes the reactions of graduate secondary school student teachers to an experiment which required them to evaluate specified techniques and theories of teaching and learning as part of their classroom practice. The aim of the experiment was to: (1) improve the quality of their judgments about pupils; (2) acquire variety in teaching…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the quality profession's fascination with various models to depict complex interactive systems. Building on these and the outcome of a four-year action research programme, it provides a model which has potential for use by other professions. It has been tailored here to suit training and learning systems.…

This monographic series volume contains two separate monographs. "The Training of Student Teachers in Discovery Methods of Instruction and Learning," (John Heywood, Sarah Heywood) discusses the polarization of discovery learning and expository teaching. It describes a unit in the applied psychology of instruction, commonly known as…

This book contains 12 papers exploring the problem of strengthening the notion of the United Kingdom as a learning society by making the country's higher education system more responsive to the various social groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in all areas of the nation's formal, postcompulsory education system. The following…

This booklet examines the definition of the term "empowerment" according to academics and policymakers and the relevance of empowerment to achieving social inclusion at the national and European Union levels. The findings of a study of the theory and practice of empowerment in five Integra projects in Ireland are reviewed and used to…