In recognition of John’s contribution to the foundation of SCoTENS, the John Coolahan award is made to the authors of the Seed Funding Report which is recognised to be most in line with the values and ideals of SCoTENS. This award is awarded annually at the SCoTENS Annual Conference.
Through his pioneering work on SCoTENS since 2003 John immeasurably enhanced cross-border cooperation in teacher education, such that the SCoTENS mission is synonymous with his name. Thanks to John’s vision, teacher educators, student teachers, serving teachers and doctoral students have learned to work across boundaries, to build bridges and to recognise common interests and challenges facing contemporary education on both sides of the border. The opportunities provided for cross-border working through SCoTENS have yielded new knowledge and understandings that shape daily practices and attitudes.
This year the SCoTENS sub-committee decided to present two very worthwhile projects with the award, the first ITRB project by Dr Catherine Stapleton and Dr James Nelson and secondly, VOTE PE project by Associate Prof Tony Sweeney, Dr David McKee and Dr Maura Coulter, Suzie Macken PhD and Ciaran Walsh.