Kindred Spirit Kindness in teacher education This project was undertaken to explore and honour the role of kindness in teacher education under the auspices of the Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South (SCoTENs) as a collaboration between researchers in Dublin City University (DCU) and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). It originally aimed to do …
Read More Kindred Spirit: A SCoTENS Research Project Report on Kindness in Teacher Education

ASSESS The focus of teaching is helping people to learn. For this reason, theories of learning and assessment are core components of initial and continuing teacher education. It is possible to categorise three main theories of learning as follows: 1. Behaviourist theory – rote learning and memorisation of facts and information are the central tools …
Read More ASSESS (Active Seminar Series for Early-Career, Student and inService Teachers): Introducing a Shared Programme of Support for ‘Assessment as Learning’ Post-Pandemic for Post-Primary Student and In-Career Teachers: From Case Study to Praxis

TLC-IME English version of report for SCoTENS TCL-IME Irish version of Report for SCoTENS Irish-medium education (IME) is a form of bilingual education in which students receive subject matter instruction through the medium of a minority language, which they are learning at school. This type of education has grown significantly since the 1970s and in …
Read More Developing Teacher and Leadership Capacity in Irish Medium Education: An Analysis of Immersion Specific Competences (TLC IME)

Interactive Apps and Narrative Writing – 2023 In a recent Briefing Paper entitled ‘Education across the island of Ireland: comparing systems and outcomes’, Roulston (2021) argues that the curriculum, pedagogic approaches and assessment in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are markedly different and he asserts that there is a need for both jurisdictions …
Read More Interactive Apps and Narrative Writing

This project relates to the presence of children’s literature within educational policy in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In particular, it focuses on the place, profile and prevalence given to children’s literature as a key component in the teaching of reading in the early years (0-8 years). It also explores the potential …
Read More An Exploration of the use of Children’s Literature in Early Reading within a Balanced Literacy Framework in the North and South of Ireland -EuCLER

This study, funded by SCOTENS, set out to explore the cultural orientations of primary school teachers in the Island of Ireland, and to examine how they affect their understandings and practices of children’s voice in schools. For example, in predominantly traditional cultures, children’s voice projects may be illusory, only allowing participation in marginal decisions and …
Read More Teachers’ Beliefs about Education and Children’s Voice Practices in the Island of Ireland

This research project highlighted a previously unreported level of frustration on the part of school leaders in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in their struggle to deal with the growing and very complex problem of cyberbullying, especially in the absence of clear and up-to-date guidance from respective government departments.  Confusion surrounding the …
Read More Cyberbullying and the Law

To map the third level education infrastructure of the island of Ireland in an effort to gauge its preparedness to exploit creative economy growth. The particular focus will rest on courses and qualification geared at the future creative industry workers. The primary goal of this project is to map the Irish education system’s ability to match …
Read More The Creative Education Infrastructure of Ireland

Project Aims (a) to prepare a summary of existing research on best practice in effective fundamental movement skill development in the work place (within and beyond education) (b) to analyse different models of fundamental movement skill training in physical education teacher education in two research sites, and to compare them with each other and the …
Read More Addressing fundamental movement skill training: Learning to move, moving to learn (LMML)

Project Aims This project is a direct result of the 2012 Annual SCoTENS Conference, and aims to (a) Identify, investigate and case-report the nature and detail of teaching and learning activities within a number of creative classrooms, north and south and (b) contribute to developing better international understanding of the issue of creativity in the …
Read More Creative Classrooms: Insights from imaginative and innovative teaching in Ireland North and South (CCIT – Ireland)