School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted the education of 91% of students worldwide. As a critical process in supporting young children's resilience, play is increasingly recognised as a valuable pedagogical strategy within a shifting educational landscape during the pandemic. This study reports on findings from a survey on play…

This paper explores the experiences and perspectives of parents from minority-ethnic backgrounds concerning their children's education in primary and post-primary schools in Ireland. Five focus groups were conducted with 20 parents of non-White African and Asian backgrounds. Our findings demonstrate complex interactions and tensions between home…

We wanted to know how teachers and parents perceive one another and how their perceptions could impact upon their behaviour. Qualitative research was best suited to our study. We interviewed teachers and parents repeatedly over the course of eight months, conducting 97 interviews in total. The teachers reflected stereotypical views of people…

This qualitative research study examined the educational provision for children with medical needs in Irish hospital schools using a case study approach encompassing the perspectives and experiences of 12 teachers currently teaching in two paediatric hospital schools. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews were employed across two…

The article analyses the findings of a small-scale qualitative study in Ireland that examines interactions between asylum-seeking mothers and primary school teachers, and highlights the significance of teachers' understandings of asylum in shaping home-school communications. Mothers and children in this study were living in Direct Provision,…

In response to the exponential growth in the prevalence of autism in Ireland and 95% of all children availing of the universal free pre-school scheme, AsIAm delivered a continuing professional development (CPD) programme, to 311 adult learners. The paper reports on a multi-method evaluation of the impact of the programme on early childhood…

The focus of this study centres on how emotions are implicated in the processes of early professional practice, among nine beginning elementary teachers in Ireland, during the course of their initial year of workplace practice, post-graduation. Adopting a multiperspectival approach, which locates emotions in the liminal space between the…

Schools are quasi-public/private organisations and being a teacher involves negotiating personal and professional boundaries. These boundaries have posed particular challenges for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBT-Q) teachers whose everyday lives are complicated by legislative, religious and cultural constraints, moral panics…

The notion of competencies has been a familiar feature of educational reform policies for decades. In this essay, Padraig Hogan begins by highlighting the contrasting notion of capabilities, pioneered by the research of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. An educational variant of the notion of capabilities then becomes the basis for exploring…

The rising divorce rate in Irish society has consequences which are resonating beyond the family, and schools can find themselves caught in the eye of the storm, having to communicate with parents in conflict over the custody of their children. This article considers the obligations on schools in such a situation, in the context Irish family law,…

Mark Twain once famously quipped, "I never let schooling get in the way of my education." Paul Simon, the American folk singer, begins one of his songs "When I think back on all the crap I learned at high school, it's a wonder I can hardly think at all." These men could just have easily been discussing schooling in Ireland, for…

Examines certain statements of principle and certain formal administrative structures pertaining to parent and student involvement in the school systems of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Ireland. Presents findings of attitude surveys on involvement and on teacher-parent and teacher-pupil relations in these two systems.…

Compared parent and teacher expectations concerning development and learning in 3- to 5-year-olds in Finland and Ireland. Found that both Irish and Finnish teachers consider social skills with peers the most important for preschoolers; however, Irish teachers stressed language and preacademic skills, while Finnish teachers stressed…

This paper begins with the observation that in education today, partnership is ubiquitous, in that partnership is mentioned in virtually all policy documents emanating from the Department of Education and Science, Ireland. However the lack of a clear understanding of partnership may mean that its usage in educational debate may obscure more than…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 11th Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES), held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 14-17 May 2013, and papers submitted to the 1st International Distance Partner Conference, organized by the International Research Centre "Scientific Cooperation,"…