In this piece the author provides a critical response to the new 'Looking at Our School' quality framework in Ireland and illustrates how policy overlooks critical scholarship. The author questions the claim that the updated policy reflects recent thinking and developments, and critiques the policy's stance on notions of both distributed…

The role of schools in developing values is internationally recognised, with many systems grappling to identify and embed values in schools. Within an Irish context, the Education Act (1998) frames values from the perspective of 'characteristic spirit', giving responsibility to boards of management to uphold the characteristic spirit as…

Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in…

As eco-criticism moves in the mainstream of film studies, questions remain about the relationship between ecological film representations and audience understanding. Addressing definitional tensions within eco-film research, this article argues that eco-criticism can be pragmatically grounded in terms of eco-film's pedagogical pertinence for…

Focusing on "The Bibliography of Irish Literary Criticism" (BILC, 2010), a bibliographical database of Irish literary criticism developed by humanities and information and communications technology (ICT) researchers in NUI Maynooth, this chapter investigates the opportunities and implications afforded the field of Irish literary studies…

A decade of transformation that emerged following a period of inertia and insularity in Irish education, the 1960s is widely regarded by scholars as representing a paradigm shift in education policy. Marked by a more interventionist, strategic policy approach, this period resulted in significant democratisation of education, particularly at…

This article provides a review and critique of scholarship on female education in Ireland, arguing that researchers have provided a consensual narrative in which women religious (nuns) played a central role in providing academic education to girls and higher education to women. The tendency has been to claim the activities of women religious as…

Background: Teacher education is an area of concern both in the policy and practice domains in both international and national contexts. Internationally, there are a wide range teacher education programmes and there is also considerable diversity with reference to policy approaches that operationalise such provision. Purpose: This paper focuses on…

While "paradigm wars" have raged internationally during the past decade in particular, the research community, qua community in the Irish context has been largely silent on these important issues. This paper provides a synthesis of key aspects of these international discourses against a brief historical backdrop of the field of…

There is a great deal of talk about a crisis in teaching across the English-speaking world, about the quality of teachers leaving much to be desired, and about the quality of student outcomes dropping. This, in turn, has resulted in various aspects of teacher preparation coming under severe scrutiny. In general, disquiet has been voiced about the…

This paper critiques learning-support policy for mathematics in Irish primary schools. The key policy question addressed is how equitable the development of the learning-support service has been in addressing low achievement in mathematics in designated schools compared to non-designated schools. The core argument developed is that there is a link…

Ireland's second periodic report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) presents the government's case that it is succeeding in protecting and promoting the rights of all children in Ireland. This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the government's Report to the CRC. Using a refined critical discourse…

Do some forms of student (and school) assessment hinder the introduction of innovative educational practices and the development of innovation skills in education systems? This report focuses on the impact of high-stake summative assessment on innovation and argues that it is possible to reconcile high-stakes assessments and examinations through…

This paper explores the work of an ongoing research project at University College Cork (UCC) which has sought to further the understanding of students in the BA Early Childhood Studies (BAECS) programme on issues of global diversity, set within childhood contexts. It tracks the process of development of the project thus far, highlighting key…

The article is based on a practice task, which was completed as part of the Higher Diploma/Masters in Family Support Studies at NUI Galway. The practice task explored in this article was conducted in a residential care unit that specialised in working with children and families. The care team based in the unit strived to provide more than…