Jim Gleeson

Strategic planning and accountability in Irish education

This article considers the impact of the New Public Management culture on Irish education and calls for a debate in relation to the prevailing bureaucratic model of accountability. The influence of the Lisbon Agenda (2000) on education planning is identified and the 2005/7 Education Strategy Statement is analysed using the relevant OECD framework. This analysis reveals the preponderance of macro policy objectives over individual learning objectives. The implications of this finding are considered in the case of two of the five goals of this Strategy Statement, those dealing with the personal and social goals of education and education quality. The paper calls for alternative indicators that will achieve balance between process and product, between responsive and contractual accountability and between individual and system outcomes. Some hopeful developments are identified.

The professional knowledge base and practice of Irish post-primary teachers: what is the research evidence telling us?

Drawing on relevant research findings, this paper considers the professional knowledge base and practice of Irish post-primary teachers. Important aspects of the Irish context are discussed, including the official neglect of educational research, the prevailing top-down approach to curriculum reform and low levels of investment in teacher development. An analysis of relevant international and national research evidence suggests that the professional practice of Irish post-primary teachers is characterised by didactic teaching, coaching for examinations and individualism and by apathy towards Education Studies, associated research and reflective practice. These findings are discussed from the perspectives of teacher education and development, teachers’ beliefs and values, school culture and education leadership.

The European Credit Transfer System and curriculum design: product before process?

This article critically considers the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) from the perspectives of outcomes-based education and the alternative process model of curriculum design. The uses of ECTS to ensure quality control and accountability and promote international student mobility are discussed. The article concludes with a discussion of the purposes of a university education, and calls for evidence-informed debate in relation to models of curriculum design for higher education.

Context and coherence in initial teacher education in Ireland: the place of reflective inquiry

Abstract This article considers the experience of one Irish institution that has incorporated forms of reflective inquiry and practice into its initial teacher education programmes. Issues of coherence arise in relation to the larger context of education in Ireland. A serious disjunction emerges in the form of a clash between an official policy that urges substantial changes in curriculum and teaching and a national and school context that is resistant to educational change. Actual – as opposed to declared – policy and school practice are dominated by technical perspectives that are at odds with the significance of reflective inquiry in teacher education and with the resulting critical awareness of context and policy. Teacher education orientated towards professional development through forms of reflective inquiry is thereby rendered politically marginal. Appropriate responses to this dilemma are proposed: namely, that teacher education maintains a long-term perspective on its duty to enable teachers to r...

Irish post-primary students' attitudes towards ethnic minorities

The changing ethnic make-up of Irish society has impacted upon schools. Existing, largely qualitative studies have highlighted mixed attitudes towards ethnic minorities. Literature has also focused on the role of the state in articulating a discourse that shapes school-level responses to minorities. This paper critiques the idea of a unitary state discourse and the role of other educational bodies, such as schools, in drawing upon a range of alternate public discourses to shape how they act, is identified. Drawing upon a large quantitative study involving 4970 post-primary pupil respondents, this paper finds that many Irish post-primary students report low levels of social distance from Black African Immigrants, Muslims and Eastern Europeans. Negative attitudes are most prevalent with respect to members of the Travelling community. The potential positive impact of school-level programmes – such as those related to global justice and inequalities – is identified through the lower levels of negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities reported by Transition Year students who have experienced such programmes.

Sectoral interest versus the common good? Legitimation, fragmentation and contestation in Irish post‐primary curriculum policy and practice

This analysis of Irish post-primary curriculum policy and practice begins with a contextualisation of the issues. Key concepts from relevant international discourse, namely legitimation and contestation, as well as the more familiar concepts of social partnership and fragmentation, form the basis for the analysis in the main part of the paper. These concepts are applied to a recent innovation, the Leaving Certificate Applied, in the concluding section of the paper.

School culture and curriculum change: The case of the leaving certificate applied (LCA)

The Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) is a distinct self-contained programme, designed for young people who do not wish to proceed directly to third level education, and for those whose needs, aspirations and aptitudes are not adequately catered for by the other two Leaving Certificate programmes (higher and ordinary). Introduced in 1995, the programme was being offered in approximately 300 schools and centres by September 2000. Around this time the LCA Support Service invited Jim Gleeson, Education Officer for the LCA during its genesis, to lead a team workshop entitled Locating the LCA in the broader context of curriculum reform, change and development. One of the key issues to emerge during this workshop was the influence of the school factor on the quality of LCA students learning experiences. It was decided to undertake a systematic inquiry into the impact of school cultural and organisation factors on the LCA as a curriculum reform, using the framework developed by Dalin (1993).

Student Teachers, Socialisation, School Placement and Schizophrenia: The Case of Curriculum Change.

The dissonance between the socialisation experiences of student teachers during their own schooling and practicums and university-based teacher education programmes is indicative of the broader theory/practice dichotomy in education. While this dichotomy is of considerable interest to all teacher educators, studies of students’ pre- and post-placement professional beliefs are rare. The authors availed of the publication of alternative curriculum pathways for Ireland to investigate the curriculum beliefs of student teachers immediately before and after their final school placement. Important contextual aspects of the study including school and teacher culture and the proposed curriculum pathways are introduced. The stark contrast between student teachers’ preferences and their views regarding the feasibility of the various pathways and their commitment to pupil-centred learning are among the main findings of the current study. A positive relationship emerged between respondents’ curriculum preferences and their grades in curriculum studies. These emerging themes are considered from the perspectives of student teachers’ beliefs about pupil learning, the theory/practice dichotomy and the importance of developing school–university partnerships.

Longitudinal study of levels of moral reasoning of undergraduate students in an Irish university: the influence of contextual factors

This paper reports a longitudinal study of levels of moral reasoning in a convenience sample of Irish undergraduate university students, using the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). The study was timely, as higher education institutions are becoming increasingly interested in the promotion of social capital and the development of the whole person. A total of 259 students completed the DIT2 at the beginning, mid-point and conclusion of their degree course. As with similar international studies, increases in levels of moral reasoning over time were statistically significant. However, Irish students DIT2 scores were markedly lower than their international peers with 62% of graduating students at the pre-conventional and conventional stages. The paper suggests some context-related explanations for the under-performance of Irish students including the instrumentalist nature of Irish post-primary education, the prevailing culture of consensualism, authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism, the conflation of religious and moral education and the emphasis on economic outputs and contractual accountability.

The gendering of global citizenship: findings from a large-scale quantitative study on global citizenship education experiences

The growing literature on the gendering of citizenship and citizenship education highlights that western notions of ‘citizenship’ have often been framed in a way that implicitly excludes women. At the same time, insofar as feminist writers have addressed citizenship, they have tended to see it in largely local and national terms. While feminist literature has laid the groundwork for understanding how schools have shaped and structured a gendered citizenry, there is a lack of large-scale quantitative data which might allow us to explore the intersection between gender and global citizenship education. Drawing on a large-scale quantitative study on development education/global citizenship education in second-level schools, the data presented here suggest that emergent notions of global citizenship are being gendered in schools. The data suggest that girls’ schools are more likely than other types of schools to emphasise a sense of responsibility for, and an analysis of, global inequalities, while differences also emerge between boys’ schools and co-educational schools.