An Irish perspective on education for all who value teaching
Episodes
Wednesday Jun 27, 2018
Wednesday Jun 27, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
This week I speak to my colleague in Marino Institute of Education, Dr. Denis Robinson, about leadership in education and specifically leadership in Christian Education. Denis Robinson is the Coordinator of the Masters in Education Studies course, Leadership in Christian Education, a degree accredited by Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin. Among the topics we discuss in the interview are:
- His conception of leadership
- What leader inspires him
- The value of daily reflection for leaders
- The course he offers on Leadership in Christian Education at the Marino Institute of Education
- How he has learned about educational leadership from Parker Palmer
- What is distinctive about leadership in Christian Education
- What school is for
This is the final Inside Education in the current series. A new series will begin in October 2018.
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
This week I am joined by University College Dublin School of Education Professor, Ciaran Sugrue, to discuss child-centred education, school leadership and educational research in Ireland. Among the topics we discuss are:
- Children-centred education
- Lack of mobility for teachers
- Privileging good relations in school
- Unmasking school leadership
- Continuous professional development – changes over the last two decades
- Despite Ireland's size, how schools vary a lot
- The value of teachers collaborating on projects
- His tenure as editor of Irish Educational Studies
- His thoughts about educational research in Ireland
Wednesday Jun 13, 2018
Wednesday Jun 13, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's programme I am joined again by Dr. Karen Hammerness who is the Director of Edcuational research and Evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History. This week we talk about the Museum as a site for education, including teacher education and we hear about the innovative programmes the museum has in place for educating people in and about science. Among the topics discussed this week are:
- The education programmes of the Museum
- Museum-based teacher education
- Learning about teaching and teacher education in Norway
- Outdoor education in Norway
- Building community in school
- What school is for
- What inspires her
- Books that have influenced her (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures and Metaphors We Live By)
Wednesday Jun 06, 2018
Wednesday Jun 06, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's programme I speak to one of the most prominent scholars of teacher education in the United States, Dr. Karen Hammerness. Dr. Hammerness is the Director of Educational Research and Evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I met up with her recently. She has conducted research into teachers' visions and into teacher education and these were the topics we discussed in this part of our interview. The specific points covered include:
- What teacher education programmes can learn from each other
- How clinical work is becoming part of teacher education
- How to evaluate or “get to know” a teacher education programme
- Preparing teachers for specific kinds of school settings
- How she would design a brand new teacher education programme
- How would you design a school that mentored novice teachers
- How do you decide if a teacher is ready for independent practice in a classroom?
- The importance of a teacher having a vision for their work
- What constitutes a teacher’s vision?
- What is the source of a teacher’s vision for teaching?
Wednesday May 30, 2018
Wednesday May 30, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I speak to four educational researchers who have just had their third book about educational research published by Bloomsbury. The new boook by Máirín Glenn, Mary Roche, Caitríona McDonagh, and Bernie Sullivan is titled Learning Communities in Educational Partnerships: Action Research as Transformation. They have also set up a website to support action researchers at www.eari.ie. Among the topics we discuss on the programme are:
- How this book differs to their previous ones
- The link between professional development and action research
- The transformative power of action research for teachers
- How the authors define research
- How action research works in practice
- Brookfield’s lenses
I have previously spoken to Máirín, Mary, Caitriona and Bernie on programmes 235 and 324,
Wednesday May 23, 2018
Wednesday May 23, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I speak to online strength and fitness coach Mike Vacanti who runs the On the Regimen website. He also has his own YouTube Channel, which contains hundreds of vlogs and videos about health and fitness. I speak to Mike about his own physical education and about his participation in the Ultimate Sweat Challenge. Among the topics discussed are:
- His own physical and health education
- What would he prioritise in a physical education curriculum
- What kept him motivated to continue with sport through his teen years and beyond
- What would he say to a child who works hard at sport but who is never picked for the team
- His thoughts on motivating people who are not interested in physical education to be more participative in the subject
- How he plans videos on his website to make them educational
- His role as mentor for the Ultimate Sweat endeavour
- What he learned as mentor for the Ultimate Sweat
- Why consistency trumps perfection
Mike referred to websites he finds helpful in the areas of nutrition, fitness and strength. They include:
- Lyle MacDonald’s website
- Brad Schoenfeld's website
- Eric Helms's website
- Rhonda Patrick's website
- Mike Matthews's website
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's programme I bring you my interview with Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Professor Lawrence-Lightfoot has written 10 books, including The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture and The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other. In the course of our interview, we discussed the following matters:
- Diversity and tokenism
- Why education research needs to move away from a pathological approach
- An alternative approach to conducting educational research
- Visibility of children in classrooms
- When global atrocities make the news, how can they be handled in classrooms?
- What looking at education through a sociological lens can make visible
- The importance of context in social science research
- Portraiture as a form of research
- Her book Exit: The Endings that Set Us Free
- Why truth matters more than facts
Wednesday May 09, 2018
Wednesday May 09, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I bring you the second part of my interview with someone who was listed as one of the most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century, Professor Jerome Kagan of Harvard University. In the course of this interview we discuss some of Professor Kagan's recent publications. The topics covered included:
- Psychology's Ghosts: The Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Stress
- Language and phenomena in psychology
- The crisis in psychology and what can be done about it
- The biggest unanswered question of all in developmental psychology
- Unresolved issues in human morality
- Five Constraints on Predicting Behavior
Wednesday May 02, 2018
Wednesday May 02, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I speak to one of the pre-eminent developmental psychologists of the twentieth century who continues publishing books and articles up to the present day. Professor Jerome Kagan of Harvard University has conducted research into infants' temperaments and how they are related to personality in later life. He is interested in how psychology can inform teachers' work. Among the topics we discuss in this part of the interview are:
- The relationship between temperament and personality
- How knowing about temperament helps teachers
- Children who find it harder to work in groups
- Insights the discipline of psychology offers to teachers
- Auditory and visual acuity
- Short-term, recall and episodic memory
- Ability to Infer
- Deduction
- Questions he’d like educational psychologists to answer
- What teachers need to know about human emotions
Wednesday Apr 25, 2018
Wednesday Apr 25, 2018
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
This week I look ahead to the upcoming conference of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) with Professor Ciarán Sugrue. The theme of the conference is "50 Years On: Reflecting on the Legacy of Free Second-Level Education." In the interview we discuss educational research, teacher education, and the impact that free education has had on the teaching profession.