Background: Given the disparities in gender representation, efforts are needed to make engineering education more inclusive and attractive to young people. It is important that those entering engineering education are making this decision with sufficient understanding of what it means to be an engineer. This study explored how lower secondary…

In Ireland state funded support services provide Continuing Professional Development for teachers and school leaders. These services are staffed with teachers seconded from their schools on an annual basis for a maximum of five years. This study investigated the learning and experience of teachers seconded to a national support service, the…

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…

The way in which young people's post-school intentions and pathways reflect their social background has been the subject of a good deal of research. However, much less attention has been paid to social differentiation in the amount and kind of career guidance information received by young people and its role in reinforcing or ameliorating social…

This paper is about social class and initial teacher education, specifically the perspectives and experiences of those from lower socio-economic groups in an initial teacher education programme in Ireland. It draws on a qualitative study employing in-depth semi-structured interviews with 21 'working class' student teachers, exploring their…

To address the issue of gender disparity in participation in the physics state matriculation exam, a novel school visit program was designed. The program was facilitated by undergraduate university students of physics and related courses who visited schools providing lower secondary education and delivered a single-session workshop including…

In this paper, I address Jacque Lacan's theory of the four discourses, namely, master/slave, university, hysteric and analyst. The four discourses are explored via interviews with five postgraduate business students from a leading Irish business school. Three of the students were prepared to abdicate responsibility for career decision-making to…

This article, emerging from a wider study on internationalization in the Republic of Ireland, explores internationalization through the everyday lived experience of faculty and its impact on their professional contexts. It highlights issues that faculty members face in a national context, where internationalization is viewed as an economic goal…

This paper focuses on the professional journeys of 14 mid- and late-career teacher educators in seven countries in the subject area of physical education. Data was gathered through two rounds of semi-structured interviews and revealed a strong emphasis on the professional relationships impacting upon participants' entry to and development within…

This study investigated the suitability of the FIT-Choice scale for use within an Irish Initial Teacher Education setting with a cohort of first year pre-service teachers (n = 143), from across five different subject disciplines. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted to examine participants' motivations for choosing teaching as a career, as…

Purpose: This paper examines the attitudes and perceptions of Irish adolescents towards potential careers in dairy farming within the context of generational renewal for a dynamic agri-food sector. Design/methodology/approach: The lens of occupational choice theory was used to present a framework within which potential careers are considered. A…

Diversifying Ireland's relatively homogeneous teaching population has been a policy concern for over a decade in the context of the rapid transformation of Irish society and schooling. This paper draws on the Access to Post-primary Teaching (APT) project, funded by the Higher Education Authority, which supports the participation of those from…

A challenge for historians of education is to explain the ways in which the development of education has been a gendered process. The literature tends to focus on primary and secondary schools; the role played by religious orders; the experiences of female teachers; ideological influences on curriculum; and the preparation of young girls for their…

The relative lack of research about postgraduate education, and especially from a widening participation (WP) perspective, is noteworthy in a context of an increasingly expanding and important postgraduate sector internationally. This paper draws on the findings of a study about the "impact" of WP initiatives at an Irish university,…

This paper explores the use of a constructivist 21st-century learning model to implement a week-long workshop, delivered as a "hackathon," to encourage preuniversity teenagers to pursue careers in STEM, with a particular emphasis on computer science. For Irish preuniversity students, their experience of computing can vary from word…