Let's Talk About Sociology of Education: Recent Episodes
Let's Talk About Sociology of Education
This podcast includes interviews between Dr. Melanie Ní Dhuinn, an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education in Trinity College Dublin and leading researchers, academics, school principals, social justice activists, teachers and policy makers as they talk about the Sociology of Education in Initial Teacher Education and how it looks in day to day reality in its many forms and guises.
The podcast has been developed as a resource to support student teachers and others working in Initial Teacher Education to try and make sense of and demystify some of the abstract and dense sociological theories and recognise them in real-time in practice. The podcast covers different Sociological Perspectives, Exploring LGBTQ+ educational experiences, Social Justice, Equity, Equality & Access, Disability and Inclusion, Cultural Capital, Values, Beliefs, Global Citizenship, The Family and the School and more.
My guest in this, the final episode of the ‘Let’s Talk About Sociology of Education’ podcast is Professor Andrew Loxley from the School of Education in Trinity College, Dublin. Andrew is the Director for undergraduate programmes in School of Education and he is also the Director of the Doctor of Education programme in Trinity. Andrew is one of the many colleagues I work with in the School of Education and he was also my doctorate supervisor in TCD and a wonderful mentor to me over the past fifteen years. Andrew and I have taught on the Sociology of Education and Research Methods modules and we have also conducted and published research together over the past number of years. It was an honour and a privilege to interview him for this final episode of the podcast series.
In this episode we discuss the use of visual methods and techniques in Sociology of Education. Visual methods and techniques include the creation and use of both participant generated and researcher generated still images as data and analysis and interpretation of the data either as a stand-alone method or as part of a suite of research methods. This approach works particularly well within the Sociology of Education elements. Andrew has used this approach in much of his work to date and under his supervision was one of the many research instruments I also used in my own doctoral work. His title “Mucky Pictures, Visual Sociology” is ‘a nod to the idea of polysemicity’, “of muck of mud, of lack of clarity”, where the same thing has different meanings to different people in the same way that there are many different perspectives and lenses through which we can look to make sense of elements of Sociology of Education. Sometimes we may think that the use of still images presents something very clear to the reader or observer, when in fact still images are not clear at all and can be very messy and open to all sorts of ranges of different interpretations. Andrew mentions how Roland Barthes describes this as “a multiple of different possibilities” with both denotation (the literal description) and connotation (deeper and more nuanced narrative) within each still image that can ‘disrupt’ the doxa.
He talks about how we may think that what is a fairly obvious image of the world of a classroom, the school corridor of a textbook of a classroom is just what we see and recognise as something familiar but that there is a “lot of unknown fierceness to when you start picking away and start sort of figuring out what the internal and external narratives of the images actually are”. Andrew believes that using visual techniques is useful and worthwhile as “elements of destabilising how we look at the world, but also in a sense of forcing us to look at the world in another way”, which in itself is a sociological approach of looking and interpreting through multiple lenses to make sense of what we first see (denotation) and through our interpretation understand the many connotations that lie beneath the surface.
He describes how in the use of participant generated images, “or trying to persuade why participants should use visual techniques…you need to be very clear as a researcher, why you want to do it, and how you're going to do it, and what you're going to get out of it. And also, what you want your participants to do with it”. Using participant generated images also involves a “huge amount of preparatory work that you need to undertake”. Andrew mentions how this approach really draws on the idea of collaboration from a research perspective, and “it also transfers or hands over a lot of control of the data generation process to your participants.” From a research perspective this empowers participants and gives them an authentic voice in the generation of the data.
He also refers to visual autoethnography from a Sociology of Education perspective and he describes how during Covid he has “been documenting my sort of life, usually around my desk”, his “changing workspace, over the past eighteen months and the sort of community that I live in, I just sort of focus in on the desk there and the changing there. In using visual techniques he describes “moving from a very sort of collaborative community collective piece (participant generated images), to very individualistic way of working with it quite nicely (visual autoethnography)”. Use of still images/photographs in visual autoethnography is very compelling and powerful and allows us to explore the ‘studium’ or the elements of the images, rather than just ‘seeing’ the sum or totality of the image’s information or meaning. In ‘looking at a still image we are also exposed to the ‘punctum’ of the image which Barthes describes as that sensory, intensely subjective effect of a photograph or an image on the viewer. Andrew says how “The studium is this, the whole the everything there. But sometimes as a punctum, you're drawn to a specific thing there that you sort of raises certain questions, and you ask certain questions, which may or may not ordinarily be there”.
We discuss Bourdieu, Marxism, impacts of Covid on student teachers from a sociological perspective and much more. We talk about how in the Sociology of Education on initial teacher education courses we can enable and support student teachers to construct their professional persona and identities and how “because you've been through this schooling process, both primary, post primary, post graduate, .. students have been through a lot of educational environments and contexts” that inform their identity as teachers as they build their own particular professional identity. Their individual experiences of school settings may be different from the settings they then find themselves in as teachers. He says how it is important that students compare and contrast between one set of experiences and another set of experiences to interpret and understand the setting and how they operate and exist within it.
In summary, Andrew advises that student teachers and educators think about their own “starting point”, values and beliefs as they negotiate their way through the dense sociological theories and concepts in trying to make sense of different perspectives, positionality, power dynamics and views in what is “sort of quite a dense network of ideas of concepts of theories”, which can be challenging to understand, identify in reality or make sense of. Tune in for the final episode of this podcast series!
My guest in this episode is Dr. Rose Dolan, Associate Professor and Teacher Educator in the Department of Education in Maynooth University. Rose led the postgraduate initial teacher education programme from 2003 to 2016 in Maynooth University and is currently the programme leader of the Doctor of Education programme in and she also leads the the Teacher Education strands on the M.Ed and the Doctorate. Rose is a qualified Science, Biology and Mathematics teacher and she also worked in the Youth Services prior to becoming a teacher. In this episode of this podcast series Rose gives a nod to a song by Madness in her title “One Step Beyond: Sociology and the three capitals”. She recalls how the song (One Step Beyond) has very few lyrics and a lot of music and the reason she chose to include it in her title was because it reminded her of the idea of taking a step, a ‘giant step or a small step’ in thinking about structural and sociological issues that can seem so big and sometimes even huge. Rose talks about taking and going one step almost beyond ourselves to further and inform our understanding and our thinking about the world and the teaching profession. We also discuss the sociological concept of capital and the many forms it takes, including economic, cultural, social and institutionalised capital also referred to as Bourdieu’s theories. Rose mentions how Bourdieu talked about capital as “presenting itself in three fundamental guises economic capital, which is immediately and directly convertible into money, and maybe institutionalised in the form of property, cultural, which is convertible into economic capital, and may be institutionalised in the form of educational qualifications, and social capital, which are social obligations, or connections, convertible in certain conditions into economic and maybe also institutionalised in the form of what he talked about title of nobility, (which I don't think we'd talk about it that same way today)”. We also discuss the Lyons et al Inside Classrooms study (2003), which Rose worked on, the ESRI Post-primary Longitudinal study, Professor Emer Smyth’s work in the ESRI, Brookfield lenses, the importance of parents in educational outcomes of their children and the privilege that teachers have in a classroom space. We discuss the challenges for parents and for teachers in supporting students to progress through the system. Rose mentions how it is important that as educators that we should look for “what is good within our young people”. And that we don't demonise them and we don't present images of them that that are hurtful for them to hear about themselves” or for them to see. “So I think within those ideas of justice and fairness, we need to be careful in the things that we say. And we need to, to be conscious of the words that are used and, and the actions that are taken that are interpreted and sometimes misinterpreted by those students that we work with.” We also discuss the challenges for student teachers in terms of capital and for those who want to become teachers but who may lack the means or the economic, cultural or institutional capital to do so and how this impacts on the overall diversity of the profession. Rose talks about how “if the cultural systems, or the culture of schools is so far, or is a distance removed from the culture of particular teachers, do they feel at home? Do they feel at home and feel steady and feel that they belong? And that's a much deeper issue that we need to think about, and that we need to talk about.” We also discuss the benefits of the extended programmes of Initial Teacher Education in Ireland and in particular the benefit of the extended School Placement or practicum and the fact that students undertake placement in at least two different settings and how this has enhanced outcomes for student teachers and also for the teaching profession overall. We discuss Covid and the impact of Covid on us as teacher educators and on student teachers. One of the most prominent memories Rose has is how when “teaching in that early stage when we had first gone home back in March, April, and being really conscious of where I was positioning the screen, and what was behind me and all of those kinds of things, Family Photos, did I want them visible, did I not? Because I think what COVID did was, we ended up going into each other's houses, whether we wanted to or not, or whether others wanted us to or not.” She mentions how students coped and how they managed to get through their courses, young people saying that “they didn't want their cameras on because they didn't want their peers, their classmates to see where they were studying from, or, what was going on in the background, people blurring their background to maintain privacy for lots of different reasons. The stories of people completing assignments on their phones, because they didn't have a laptop or a desktop at home, that they could work on. People sharing devices in a family and, and the demand for particular devices at particular times. Those were some of the things from the early part of COVID-19. that really stuck with me…all of those things speak to structural equality or structural inequality.” Dr. Rose Dolan finishes her episode with the thought that “sometimes this kind of stuff (Sociology of Education) can seem big and vast, and you get lost in the middle of it, and you get wobbly. You just go wobbly, and you figure some of these are so massive, how can I possibly make any difference within it. And that goes back to that idea of “just one step one step beyond”. All we need to do is continue to take that one step beyond to make progress. Céim ar chéim, i ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin.
My guests in this episode are Dr. Kathryn Will, Assistant Professor of Literacy education in the University of Maine, Farmington in the USA and Dr. Robin D. Johnston, who is Associate Professor and field based experience coordinator, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, USA. I was very fortunate to meet both Kathryn and Robin a couple of years ago at the Clinical Fellows symposium in the States at the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) in Atlanta in 2019 and again in Atlantic City in February 2020. Clinical Fellows started in 2015 with the Association of Teacher Educators in the United States and the purpose of it was to really focus on the value of clinical experiences to support the way professors within teacher education and administrators approach clinical practice/ school practicum. Clinical Fellows offers practitioners an opportunity to meet and make connections, network and share experiences. For me it was one of the most energising experiences I have ever had and wasn’t like a conference at all because it was wholly participative in nature and participant led and focused. It's all about facilitation “is not a sit and get opportunity, but instead, it is inquiry. It is the use of protocols, equity of voice in conversations and it's just incredibly generative in nature”. I was really pleased to have the opportunity to interview both Kathryn and Robin for the podcast and to discuss teacher education and teacher preparation with them. In the podcast we focus on Clinical Practice in teacher education in the US and the importance of social and emotional learning for teachers, both practising and pre-service. They mention the importance of communities and how “it's not just about the academic content. It's not about just preparing the future teachers to consider what are the standards, how do we use curriculum or how do we plan instructional practices, but instead, it's about the community, the community within the classroom, the community within the school, the community within a larger area, town, city, whatever it might be”. Kathryn mentions how we all have to come back to ourselves first as teacher educators, and who we are, what our positionality is and “how who we are impacts what we do”. She also says that “if you talk to teachers, they know that social emotional learning is the absolute key to what we do, you cannot ask a child to do Math if their needs have not been met”. She talks about how she designed a course in her teacher education programme in the last year, called social emotional learning which was framed around the Casel framework. The Casel ‘five’ as they're known, are self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making relationship skills and social awareness. “It's all about taking ownership of yourself so that you can then expand out and grow, they build upon one another, my greatest learning in the last year, was just how much the future teachers needed to think about this for themselves before we could actually talk about what it was going to look like in the classroom, that became very apparent”. Robin talks about trans-literacy which is one of her research interests. This stemmed originally from the writing she does as sustainable professional development. About six years ago, she came upon the term of ‘trans-literacy’ which she defines as the fluidity of movement across a range of textbook technologies medias and contacts, which six years ago didn't mean as much even as it does today. She goes on to describe how; “And part of my oral language development course was, of course, the difference between academic language, formal language, and casual, you know, informal language and how our schools have this formal language, you know, kind of the school rules, versus our home has an playground and friend experiences have this more, you know, casual language, and understanding how to help students bridge the two, because trans-literacy is really defined by the situational, social, cultural and technological context, which to me is the heart of like the sociology of education, it really is about, you know, there's another term for what we call simultaneous literacy, where you're having to navigate all of those literacy and communication techniques and figure out what's going to work where your audience is, what the purpose is, and really understanding those contexts”. We discuss a number of sociology of education theoretical approaches, including Bandura’s teacher efficacy, the zone of proximal development and the ways in which having strong mentors (cooperating teachers, site professors, teacher educators) to help learn through these processes is a critical piece. “And we come back to that clinical practice experience, we come back to the opportunities to learn side by side”, pre-service teachers and teacher educators. We also discuss the concept of teacher educators as experts and how in fact that the teacher educators are not the only expert, that the classroom teacher is equally an expert, as is our student who's with us in the classroom, “how they have those lived experiences, how they have that funds of knowledge that they're bringing to the understanding, sometimes they are able to better grasp what's going on with the child than I am”. Kathryn refers to this as a mindset of humility, as “I'm in those clinical experiences, as I have the opportunities to walk into the classrooms, and learn with my students. And I think that brings it, you know, this idea of third space, where we're all coming together…And I think that the ways in which I'm trying to work in teacher education, there really is that opportunity to learn from and learn in practice that's really aligned with the sociology”. Preparation of teachers has changed globally and where previously “it was a case of now go forth and try your best. I mean, that's really what it was like..” now it is a more equitable co-construction where the roles of the cooperating classroom teacher, the pre-service teacher and the Higher Education/University are interlinked as professional experts working together. Robin says that for her one of the most important things is staying in that continual Lifelong Learning Mode, “because I do think we all have so much more that we can learn from each other, again, as we said, the importance of Clinical Fellows, and, you know, meeting with people hearing, having those discussions, talking about that classroom, learning from our colleagues, and then modelling that to our students”. Clinical Fellows informs how we talk to our future teachers “about how important that collegial collegiality and that networking in that finding your person, and your people who share that passion with you” and how as “we move forward in this new world and, and learn what's gonna work best for us, which is that social and emotional piece..”, and “what I've seen of my students, it is just as much if not more important than the academic pieces at times, you know, there has to be that balance. But we can't forget about that”. Robin concludes by saying how we have to make social and emotional learning a priority, and “be intentional in every class, to develop that mindfulness to develop that awareness to develop those self-care techniques”. “Because there is so much to do in the teaching world, that it'll get pushed to the one side if we don't make it intentional..”, very important words here from Robin for us all. It was an incredible privilege for me to attend two very empowering and energising Clinical Fellows symposia in the US. As a Clinical Fellow and I look forward to returning to the US for the next face to face Clinical Fellows symposium as soon as it is safe to travel. I look forward to meeting other clinical fellows and networking in a different global space discussing our ongoing work as teacher educators, the challenges, the wins and the opportunities and most of all of learning from wonderful practitioners including Robin and Kathryn from whom I have learned so much and to whom I am very grateful for their generosity of spirit and invitation to join the conversation about clinical practice. Listen in to hear more!
My guest in this episode is Professor A. Lin Goodwin. Professor Goodwin is Dean of the Faculty of Education in the University of Hong Kong and was previously the Evenden Professor of Education in Teachers College, Columbia. She is a renowned teacher education expert globally and has researched and published broadly on many aspects of teacher education and related topics. Lin’s research interests include teacher and teacher education, beliefs, identities and development, equitable education and powerful teaching for immigrant and minorities, youth, international analysis, comparisons of teacher education practice and policy on the particular issues facing Asian and Asian American teachers and students in US schools. I was very fortunate to have met and worked with Lin as part of the DEEPEN project ( Droichead: Exploring and Eliciting Perspectives, Experiences and Narratives) where she was a member of the international research advisory team that guided and supported the empirical work of the project that explored teachers’ lived experiences of the Droichead professional induction process in Ireland for newly qualified teachers. Lin has been inspirational in her work in teacher education and with newly qualified teachers and is an incredible mentor to students, newly qualified teachers and to teacher educators and researchers in the field of teacher education everywhere. It was a great honour for me to work with her on the DEEPEN project and also a great honour to have the opportunity to interview her for this podcast episode. In this episode Lin describes how her pathway into education started in the classroom but somewhat surprisingly that she “was not a person who always wanted to be a teacher, I do not come from a family of teachers”. She says that despite getting accepted on her choice course in the National University of Singapore that her mother had other ideas as she “always had a dream, to go away, she never went to University, she always had a dream for her children to go to university, and to go to university away from Singapore. So we had relatives in the US, and that is where I ended up.. ”. Her mother was quick to dismiss her efforts at writing poetry once she got to the US, something that Lin enjoyed and advised her that she thought that Lin “should think about teaching, because you've always been good with children. And, you know, it's nice steady work, you know, that sort of thing. And I think I was just tired. And I gave in, and probably was the best decision of my life.” Lin is a certified teacher both at both special education and general education and she describes education as being “an area of great creativity. It's an area of social justice, everything that you do, has an impact on society and on the future. So it is incredibly important work at the same time that it's incredibly difficult..”. Lin’s choice of title for her podcast episode (Beliefs, Diversity and Social Justice for New Teachers) was driven by the fact that for her “it really sits at the very heart of my work and my research. It was where I started my own research journey.” She remembers how during her undergraduate research work she “ kept coming up against this notion of beliefs. And the fact that, first of all, at that time, it was an understudied area. Now, it's an area that's, you know, quite substantively researched. But at that time, it was a very, very new idea that as teachers or as human beings, we come into any situation with a variety of beliefs and assumptions, and those come from our families, from our upbringing, from our experiences, none of us escapes them. So it's, it's human nature to come, [you know], with some, sort of internal, sometimes unconscious ideas about how things work.” She describes her research study and how she learned that it is not possible to be belief or value free. So that's one thing we need to sort of put aside, it is not possible to be completely neutral, there's no such thing, none of us is neutral. And even the things that we say are objective, someone decided on that objectivity, someone created something someone, you know, made a decision”. Lin believes that it is important that we examine and interrogate the concepts of beliefs, diversity and social justice in the teacher education space because the reality is that “that we live in a very unequal world. So we know that boys are treated a certain way, and girls are treated another way. We know that the colour of your skin, the address, where you live, how much money your parents have in the bank, the clothes that you wear, so many things influence how people treat you. And there's a lot of research speaking of sociology, there's a lot of sociological research that has looked at this phenomenon. So social justice requires that we become very conscious and, and actively resist some of the inequitable, racist biases that we believe that we bring with us. And again, none of us is immune, because we live in a very unequal world.” We also discuss diversity in the teaching profession and Lin points out that “the reality is that diversity in sort of the more traditional sense around racial, ethnic, and language diversity is particularly salient. Because of the ways we structure schools, and what is considered appropriate ways to speak, or appropriate ways to behave. And those sensibilities are always sort of culturally grounded. They are not innate. They're not part of you know, what every normal , human being has. They are things that are cultivated and nurtured according to who you are and where you were brought up. So there are kids who come to school, and right away, they do not fit in”. She goes on to describe how she is currently having a conversation about immigrant students and how she and her colleagues are exploring a concept “that we're calling, you know, othering, newcomer pedagogy, ways in which teachers actively resist othering and think about how they create welcoming spaces for immigrant students. And we talked about the millions of ways in which a newcomer is othered. And it's not simply about the fact that you don't speak the language. Everything you do, makes you stick out like a sore thumb.” This is an absolutely fascinating podcast episode and Professor Goodwin is a truly inspirational teacher educator. Tune in to hear much more on this very exciting episode!
My guest in this episode is Ms. Chrisdina O’Neill. Chrisdina is a Newly Qualified Teacher, a graduate of the Professional Master of Education (PME) initial teacher education (ITE) programme in the School of Education, University College Cork and she is very proud of her identity as a member of the Travelling community. Chrisdina has been teaching as a newly qualified teacher in her induction year in Doncaster in England. Chrisdina also completed her undergraduate degree in University College Cork, graduating with a honours degree in English and History. She has a very special affinity with University College Cork and in particular with the UCC Access Team and Chrisdina hopes to return to UCC at some point to complete a PhD in Education. Chrisdina recently featured on the RTÉ/IUA My University Life Television documentary where she described her experiences of becoming a teacher, battling stereo-types , breaking down barriers and stigma around university within marginalised communities and pursuing her dream to become a teacher. In this episode we discuss Chrisdina’s pathway through education from her primary and post-primary school experiences, the influence of her family and her parents on her engagement with education and how as a member of the Travelling community that there were expectations that she would not remain in education but would instead leave school after Junior Cert because within the Travelling community “ we were kind of expected to be housewives and get married, have kids everything..” and arising from this expectation Chrisdina was “all geared up on leaving [after] Junior cert, this will be great.. “[leaving after Junior Cert]. However when Chrisdina started first year in post primary school she really liked it and “found I absolutely loved education, had wonderful teachers.. Because they were there for me. They helped me. They helped me fall in love with learning, especially with History and English, which are my two subjects now that I teach. I just found that this was where I was meant to be. And I really had those teachers push me along”. Chrisdina attributes her strong work ethic to her mother and describes her as a very hard working lady, “I can honestly say my Mam was my inspiration. And she might have gone to university. But by God, I got my work ethic from her. So I always saw her going out working hard and earning enough to support our family, and my Dad as well”. Having completed her Junior Cert she recalls how she had “an awful battle to stay in school, had teachers called the house, made sure that I was coming back went into fifth year, and then University came off the idea”. “Of course they'd (her parents) known that I was gonna be a problem from the start when I stayed on school. So that conversation came up. And it lasted definitely for about six months. In my Leaving Cert year, going back and forth, “you're not going I am going you're not going””. She recounts how it really was a huge challenge “trying to get around them to let me go to University”, because for them it was something very new. She says that her parents’ idea was that “they thought to be happy, you get your own money, and you can get what you want”. She says that none of her family had ever gone to University because “it's not for the likes of my family”. Chrisdina talks about how because she attended a DEIS school that was linked to UCC that she was fortunate to secure a place on an Easter taster programme that afforded her an opportunity to experience College life, attend lectures and sample the University experience. She recalls how when she “walked onto the Quad and I just looked out, saw the West Wing building, and I was just like, Well, you know, who would have thought that I would get to even like experience Easter school in this place. And it was just at that moment that I knew that like, I need to go here. Like I need, to I need to be here. And then I went back and it was kind of discussing a bit teachers going back and forth. What do I need to do to be able to go to University College Cork, like what things do I need to be able to do? Like, what courses can I do?” She was successful in her application and secured an undergraduate place in UCC but had many battles with her family to actually go to College but her dedication and commitment enabled her to take her place and pursue her dream. She says that the common ground she found with her parents was that “I'll travel down and I've come home every night.” She talks about how as a member of the travelling community, “we are very restricted about like travelling and where we can go that there was not a hope in hell that I could stay over and any traveller that I've spoken to, could never stay over. But try to attend University. So it's very much if you want to go, you need to be dedicated. And you're not, you're not just going to get handed on a silver platter to, like, we need to be so dedicated, you need to stick it out. And you need to keep going”. She continued to travel to and from her home to UCC throughout her undergraduate (4 years) and postgraduate ITE course (2 years) and graduated in 2020 with a Professional Master’s in Education. She has moved to England for her induction year and in her episode she compares her experience and the school system in England to her experiences and the school system in Ireland. Chrisdina describes how she regularly challenges the stereotypes associated with the Travelling community including “the stereotype that people have that we do live in caravans that we rob and steal, we don't get jobs, we live off benefits, like it's not true. My Mother has always been hard working from when I was young, my Dad has always tried his best and done his work. Now I’m a qualified teacher, like my sister, you know, like, we've all worked”. She goes on to say how she wants to be a role model for her sisters and for other women in the Travelling community, “I have two younger sisters and I when I went to college, it was very much I wanted them to look up it up to me, I want to be a role model. And it's about empowering women early in our community that they can do, that you can go out and work that we're not housewives, we're not just there to have babies and rear children, you know, because that is a stereotype that people have as well and that the men go out and work the men support us”. Chrisdina concludes by talking about her future plans as a teacher, a role model, an advocate and inspiring students to achieve their potential. She intends returning to Ireland at some stage and hopefully undertaking her Doctorate in UCC where she “felt at home the most”. “So I feel if I do decide and want to do it I will be coming back to Cork. Finally, topping it off there, because I had my journey, I started there. And if I had to go the whole way, I'd love to finish it there as well. The support in there, and the staff in there are phenomenal”. She says that she couldn’t imagine herself as a qualified teacher if it hadn’t been for “who I had in my corner in UCC”. This is a really motivational episode, Chrisdina is inspirational, encouraging and grounded all at the same time. She epitomises a positive, can-do approach and is a super role model for members of the Travelling community and for potential student-teachers everywhere. Her interview reveals and identifies so many aspects of Sociology of Education that are really useful in constructing meaning for student-teachers, newly qualified teachers, teacher educators, principals, teachers, school management and anyone interested in education. Tune in and hear more!
My guest in this episode is Mr. Alex Murphy. Alex is a Newly Qualified Teacher and a graduate of the Professional Master of Education (PME) initial teacher education (ITE) programme in the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin Alex has been teaching as a newly qualified teacher in his Induction Year in an Educate Together post-primary school in Dublin. His PME research was supervised by Dr. Erika Piazzoli and focused on an examination of the role of the body in a second language classroom. Alex has published his ITE research work recently in the Student Teacher Educational Research (STER) peer reviewed e-journal. In this episode we discuss the transition from being a student teacher to becoming a newly qualified teacher and how what student teachers learn in their teacher preparation programmes is relevant and does reveal itself in even greater detail as a newly qualified teacher. He mentions that the transition from the initial teacher education phase to the induction phase is welcome and something that student teachers look forward to but that that it can be an abrupt transition. Alex says that “you're not going to be the student teacher forever. And eventually, you are going to be the teacher that gets to see these, these social, sociological theories come to life in the classroom”. He advises “that there isn’t any middle ground between being a student [and] becoming a teacher for PME students” and, that” the transition happens almost kind of overnight, as you move from pretty minimal responsibility to do a full contract in a matter of months, you know, in April, May, you're finishing off your thesis and then when it hits August, September, you’re responsible for full classes, so the jump is quite big”. He also mentions how when student-teachers complete their initial teacher education, that “you realise the kind of wealth of knowledge and experience it's actually out there in the field”. Alex describes how when he started as a newly qualified teacher that there were a lot of new staff, including newly qualified teachers in his school who all started at the same time. He says that he had wonderful in-school support during the pandemic when all other supports were online. He says that “just being able to go to someone and say, do you have any idea what's going on?Because I'm not entirely sure, either. And having that reassurance that everyone struggles in the beginning, but we got there, you know, we’ve made it through the year”. Alex identifies a number of significant changes from his role as a student teacher to his role as a newly qualified teacher and “how you're no longer in the space that appears to supervise the class, but you're very much a member of staff and have a responsibility within the school”. This has been challenging for him and other newly qualified teachers but that he really enjoys “the independence that comes with this, and the freedom to teach the way you want to teach”. He reminds PME students that “you will eventually get to decide how you want to do things in your classroom. So we can be collaborative, but it should be on a teacher's terms as to how much they want to collaborate and how much collaboration they're comfortable with, because everyone has their own way of doing things”. He talks about teacher autonomy and how having the final say in what happens in his lessons is really important and “that sense of autonomy boosts your self-confidence and allows you to make assured and informed decision” and you know that by the end of your Induction year, that “you're able to stand on your own two feet, and you're able to stand over decisions that you've made”. We discuss a number of different Sociology of Education concepts including; teacher identity and NQTs forming a teacher identity, the family and the school, school culture, family culture, cultural capital, curriculum, language and the pedagogy of teaching a language, additional curricular activities in school and much more. Alex reflects on his own family cultural capital and how that influenced his progression in education and how education was valued in his home. He realises that not all students are fortunate to have the support that he had and that there are multiple priorities for families overall and sometimes school and engagement in education is not one of those priorities. He comments how “it’s not the education system’s job to impose certain priorities on families”, but instead it is “our job is to help these students through the system as best as we can, and help them to achieve success in whatever way they can in our lessons in our subjects, whatever it might be, and their schooling, too..” He concludes by discussing the “usefulness of the Sociology of Education modules” and “how they really become clear when you're actually in the classroom yourself. And when you're the teacher that is solely responsible for a group… I think it's then that you see they're useful in the sense that, you know, they allow you to the scope to kind of focus on the needs of everyone, and then that can be hard to challenge at times”. He says that that sociology modules tell us is that “there's a lot more going on outside of the classroom than we could ever realise. So you have to consider what happens outside of the space that allows it to be that way”. This is a great episode for student teachers, teacher educators, newly qualified teachers, parents, policy makers, school management and teachers. This interview with Alex is a very honest, enjoyable, encouraging and reassuring account as he recalls how his engagement with the Sociology of Education modules as a student teacher and now the newly qualified teacher has been “hugely beneficial, just for perspective, taking, I think, more than anything else, and for developing empathy towards everyone that's involved”. Tune in to hear more!
My guest in this episode is Dr. Aimie Brennan. Aimie is a lecturer in Education Policy and Practice and a Teacher Educator in Marino Institute of Education where she teaches Research Methods and also teaches on the Education Studies programme and the BEd programme. Prior to working in Marino Institute of Education, Aimie spent five years teaching in Mary Immaculate College and has taught Sociology to early childhood education, primary, post-primary and Master’s students. Aimie has a PhD in Sociology from University College Cork, which is where she started teaching and tutoring in the Department of Sociology and Philosophy. Aimie is the convenor of the pedagogy of sociology and professional practice study group in the Sociological Association of Ireland (SAI) and is founder and coordinator of the STER project http://www.ster.ie/ The Student Teacher Educational Research (STER) project includes a student peer-reviewed eJournal, a Conference and a podcast. In this episode we discuss challenges for teacher educators when teaching Sociology of Education in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses. Aimie’s interest in the challenges for teacher educators teaching Sociology of Education stems from her own interest in the position of sociology and teacher education and changes that have happened throughout the history of Teacher Education, she mentions how there have been several reform periods over time, through the twenties, thirties, sixties and seventies and how sociology has always been a core part of teacher education. She mentions how the position of sociology in policy and curriculum is not necessarily always reflected in practice and how she sometimes finds herself teaching sociology that student teachers sometimes struggle to engage with for very legitimate reasons. We discuss the value of sociology and sociological theory for student teachers at primary education level and also how we might use a sociological lens to consider what the challenges are for teaching sociology and looking at some of those influences. We focus on the kind of rationalisation and the homogeneity of the group that we are teaching as the kind of challenges that face us as teacher educators. As a Teacher Educator Aimie says that her own thinking has probably changed over time and while working in teacher education that she doesn’t actually think as a Sociologist that she can actually fully prepare students to understand all of the complex concepts that exist in the classroom, not with the kind of time that's allocated to sociology, at a sufficiently deep level, but she tries to ensure that students have a nuanced understanding and appreciation of values in different contexts. She says she concentrates on two things (which seem to be the two things that occur all the time when she is talking about sociology, or when she is talking about policy because they overlap). So rather than taking a kind of a thematic approach, which Aimie believes happens a lot in sociology, “where it tends to be, where we’re talking about gender, or we’re talking about class, or we are talking about family or community”... she tends to teach around two things. “So the first thing is encouraging students to see reality as constructors. So social constructionism, on how that underpins everything”. And the second thing, “understanding their own biography, and how that can actually develop more empathy and more understanding of the influence of structure and agency”. She says how one of the important things that students can do is to really spend time and energy unpacking their own biography and unpacking their performance, because all facets of sociology, whether it's class, or gender, or bias, or capital or prejudice, or socialisation are all ingrained in our identity and our performance. Aimie talks about shedding a little bit more light on how we as individuals and as teachers have responsibility for reinforcing and unpacking inequality, and “how we're actually all influenced by power and norms. So for example, like Foucault talks about power, not as one person having a monopoly over somebody else. But as a gaze, you know, a common standard that we all internalise”. She says how student-teachers can kind of appreciate “that actually, we all contribute to fostering conformity on some level. And by that we do that by responding to behaviour of children in the classroom or by reacting in a certain way”. She goes on to describe how it is important that student-teachers understand “that control over what's normal or abnormal, is not located out there in some, you know, powerful individuals or powerful institutions, but actually, it's located in ourselves, then that turns the spotlight inwards. And we have to ask ourselves, you know, how do we behave? What should we understand our role to be? What stigmas do we experience, personally? And how does that influence how we respond to things that happen in the classroom?” We briefly discuss student teachers as reflective practitioners and how challenging it is for student teachers to get time to actually engage critically with sociological theories and to reflect on those theories and make connections in practice when their ITE programmes are so busy and so packed with required modules. Aimie mentions one of her research projects on which she worked with Dr. Angela Canny in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick focusing on students’ engagement with the sociology of education, particularly looking at their experience of it over time, and how relevant they feel it is to their practice and the challenges that they experience. Some student feedback indicates that they don't see the relevance of some of those sociological concepts because they don't directly affect them and there is also evidence of where they do consider sociology useful for addressing different things in practice things like equality and fairness and they do find it useful for increasing tolerance for diversity, and trying to work a little bit more with families and partnership with parents. Tune in and hear much more from Aimie about challenges for Teacher Educators within the Sociology of Education modules in this episode.
My guest in this episode is Dr. Maria Campbell. Maria is a lecturer and teacher educator in the School of Education in St. Angela’s College in Sligo http://www.stangelas.nuigalway.ie/ where she teaches Sociology of Education (and other modules) and is Director of Graduate programmes. She is also the Southern co-chair of SCoTENS 2019-2022 and is a member of the Ubuntu Assembly (embedding Development Education in 2nd level Initial Teacher Education). Maria is a former primary school teacher and principal. As a newly qualified teacher Maria spent her summers travelling to India, South America, Africa and many other countries where she did some voluntary work over the years, going beyond the tourist holiday, taking the opportunity to live with and work with people in different countries. Maria believes that this opened up for her the notion of ‘differences’, different perspectives, different geographical backgrounds, different cultures, etc. Living and working with people in different countries, thinking in different ways fascinated Maria and informed her thinking and forced her to question herself about what she didn't know as she tried to understand why people thought in different ways, why they acted in different ways, what caused them to think differently and how that impacted on her and her role as a teacher. In this episode we discuss positioning and positionality and how this influences our perspectives. Maria describes the concept of positionality in relation to her place of work, and her life practices, and in relation to norms and practices in communities and looking at the bigger picture and overall context. She uses the example of children all going to school (a norm in many communities) and how it came to be the fact that all children go to school? She asks if that was a bottom up idea or did we all come together in a small community and say this is a great idea, or was it a top-down idea or an imposed approach? She talks about how we might agree and go along with the norm or how we can go the opposite route and challenge the norm if we don’t agree with it. Maria asks the question if practices, norms and structures impact on children’s privilege, advantaging some and disadvantaging others. She uses these example to explain how in Sociology of Education in an Initial Teacher Education context we rationalise depending on our positioning and where we locate ourselves in the overall context. We discuss the concepts of ‘othering’, ‘identity’, ‘equality and equity’, ‘agency’ and ‘power’. concepts Maria describes as being underpinned by social justice. We also discuss ‘deficit’ and charity and how the circle of privilege often shields us, in that whatever we see, what we do, whoever we are, as “the way to go”. And for those who do not fit into ‘our’ mould or modus operandi (whether we are coming from a good place, potentially, or perceived), are in need of charity and are seen as being a deficit, because “they're not as good as you are and not like you”. We discuss cultural mediation, what culture is, cultural norms, culture and traditions, sets of norms, be it in our homes, in families and how different families can be have totally different cultural norms. We discuss the sociological theories of Nussbaum and emotions, Bourdieu and habitus and Bernstein and how these theorists all manifest in Initial Teacher Education Sociology of Education. Maria also discusses SCoTENS (The Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South) https://scotens.org/ which is a network set up in 2003 as part of the broader peace dynamic that was gathering momentum on the island of Ireland at the time to create a safe space for teacher educators in Ireland North and South to come together and discuss issues of common interest, and explore ways of co-operating closely together. SCoTENS has always been rooted in the deepest commitment to quality teaching and learning for all and Maria is currently the Southern co-chair and a member of the steering committee. Maria describes her experiences both as a teacher and a principal and her extensive research past and present including a research project with Home Economics teachers collaborating with the University of Helsinki, another project on teacher agency with colleagues in Stranmillis, a student-teacher based project focusing on technology and online platforms with her colleague Dr. Deirdre Harvey and a Sociology project with Dr. Niamh Hourigan from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick; The TEACH Report (Traveller Education and Adults: Crisis, Challenge and Change) which mapped challenges faced by young Mincéirs (Irish Travellers) in dealing with adult transitions in the Irish education system. We also talk about the impact of Covid on us as teacher educators and on student teachers, using technology, break-out rooms, collaboration, broadband access, equities and inequities for students, isolation, student honesty and openness during lectures and tutorials and much more. Tune in to hear much more in a very enjoyable, thought provoking and motivational contribution from Dr. Maria Campbell.
My guests in this episode are Dr. Rory McDaid and Dr. Garret Campbell from Marino Institute of Education. Dr. Campbell is the project manager for the Migrant Teacher project https://twitter.com/MTPteacher in Marino Institute of Education and he is also the chief executive of Global Schoolroom. Dr. McDaid is the Migrant Teacher project coordinator and he is a senior lecturer in Sociology of Education in Marino Institute of Education where he is also Head of Policy and Practice. In this episode we discuss The Migrant Teacher project. The Migrant Teacher project supports immigrant internationally educated teachers to enter the teaching workforce in Ireland. The Migrant Teacher Project was established by Marino Institute of Education and is co-funded by the Department of Justice and Equality and the Department of Education and Skills. The project provides information, advice and training to migrant teachers who have qualified outside of Ireland, to help them to continue their profession in publicly funded schools in Ireland. The Project also provides a Bridging Programme to further enhance migrant teachers' professional development and opportunities for securing employment. The project has developed a network of schools who are interested in working as mentor teachers with migrant teachers all of whom are qualified teachers who have spent considerable time in the classroom with some of them are coming from leadership positions and many of them with huge levels of experience within the education system.
Garret discusses the research they are currently undertaking to understand the experiences of migrant teachers and their efforts to provide potential solutions to some of the problems for migrant teachers or present potential changes for migrant teachers within the system. He identifies three main challenges which he believes the migrant teacher faces in the system. The first challenge is securing teacher registration status in Ireland. He comments on how these teachers are amply qualified and have significant experience working in their own context but that it can be very stressful and very challenging for migrant teachers to secure registration here. The second challenge he identifies is recruitment and how the Migrant Teacher project advise migrant teachers to get involved with an Irish school in either an observation capacity in a volunteer capacity, because they will straightaway begin making connections with school principals, or deputy principals and other teachers, and they will be able to get a reference from an Irish context, rather than a reference from another jurisdiction. The third challenge identified is progression through and within the education system.
Garret acknowledges that while Irish society has changed very dramatically in terms of demography, demographics and ethnicity what we see within the teaching profession remains largely homogenous and that while we know that diversity and inclusion benefits us all that this is not being fully translated into the teaching profession.
We discuss how migration takes place in all kinds of ways for all kinds of different reasons as well. They discuss how a lot of people on the Migrant Teacher Project have chosen to come to live in Ireland and how in Ireland there is a very strong history of Irish teachers migrating for three, four or five years to work elsewhere, and then return to Ireland, meaning it is not a unidirectional flow of teachers into Ireland only.
Rory mentions how in Ireland that there is a strict primary-post-primary division while in other jurisdictions there is a blended approach where there is a middle school where teachers can teach across from primary to post-primary or language teachers who will teach language from early primary to upper post primary but that when migrant teachers come to Ireland from other jurisdictions that it is challenging for them ‘to fit’ to the Irish model.
They recount how some of the migrant teachers who have been very successful in their own countries can't even get into an entry level position in Ireland and that this impacts on their identity as a teacher. Both Rory and Garret refer to how after migrant teachers move to Ireland, they often feel like they are no longer a teacher or are ‘teachers in transition’ which is very challenging and damaging to their professional identity.
Yet another thought provoking episode that will be of interest to teachers, student teachers, parents, school management, management bodies, policy makers, communities and educators in general. Tune in to hear more!
My guests in this episode are Dr. Gavin Murphy, Dr. Declan Fahie and Bella
Fitzpatrick.
Dr. Gavin Murphy is an Assistant Professor in Education in the School of Education
in Trinity College Dublin. As a post primary school teacher Gavin worked as a
languages teacher. He was introduced to Sociology of Education both during his
initial teacher education and before that, while studying languages, when he studied
sociolinguistics. This sensitised him to the idea of questioning ‘taken for granted
assumptions’. He mentions Mills, who invites us in our sociological imagination to
make the familiar strange and how as an Irish teacher, that kind of minority
perspective he had about making the familiar strange was in relation to language first
and foremost. Gavin’s main area of research interest and work in his current role
focuses on educational policy and leadership.
Dr. Declan Fahie is a former primary school teacher, he has taught in West Dublin,
the UK and in Sicily and he is currently Director of School Placement and Director of
Research in UCD. Declan was a teacher for almost 20 years working in primary
schools and mostly in West Dublin. He spent a lot of his teaching career teaching
Junior infants. He mentions how four and five year olds were his audience for many,
many years in a job that he absolutely loved. Declan has taught Sociology of
Education, to PME student teachers, at both primary and post-primary level. His
Master's thesis was on the experiences of lesbian and gay teachers.
Bella Fitzpatrick worked initially as a volunteer at Shout Out (www.shoutout.ie) for
seven years and became its first ever employee in 2017 and is now CEO of the
organisation and an LGBTQ+ educator. Bella believes that sociology includes the
study of society, human social behaviours, patterns of social relationships, social
interaction. Bella describes constantly trying to get people to be a bit more fluid in
their thinking about things they think are just set in stone and think more broadly and
more inclusion overall.
In this episode we discuss LGBTQI+ issues in Education for teachers, students and
school communities from a number of different perspectives including; social justice,
equity, inclusion, equality of opportunity, representation in the teaching profession of
and for LGBTQI+ teachers and contemporary, practical LGBTQI+ student issues and
challenges. My guests articulate a broad variety of views on inclusion and diversity
within the teaching profession. We explore key challenges and barriers, such as
progression, for LGBTQI+ teachers within the profession. We also look at
opportunities for LGBTQI+ teachers, the visibility and inclusion of the diverse
LGBTQI+ community within our education system, the opportunities for all teachers
and school leaders to be allies to the LGBTQI+ members of the school community,
and the impact of Covid on the LGBTQI+ community over the past 15 months.
This is a really informative, interesting and engaging episode from three really
inspiring contributors. Some of the stand out points for me from this podcast episode, include how the concepts of empathy, tolerance, acceptance, belonging, compassion and care are so critical in working together to address LGBTQI+ issues in education.
Gavin describes his first research engagement with the whole question of
educational leadership research, policy (specifically, the National LGBTI Youth
Strategy) and LGBTQ+ questions, which was the interconnection between our own
researcher subjectivity and educational leadership research and why when we talk
about leading, there was this glaring absence compared to all of the other topics of
social justice. There was much research in leadership and policy fields where there
was economic challenge and ethnically diverse communities, and he questioned why
wasn’t there more to talk about leading in respect to gender and sexual diversity and
expression. He also articulates a Sustainable Development Goals point of view and
how there are very clear connections to the work of a sustainable educational
provision and ensuring that for example, some challenges that LGBTQ+ children
face, for example when they don't have a positive coming out experience and how
this can impact on their well-being and mental health.
Gavin and Declan talk about their free online resource www.queerying.ie where they
discuss and present many LGBTQI+ issues with contributions from other scholars, in
the area of research on queer issues in education, as well as contributions from
teachers and some of the advocacy groups. They both comment on how things have
improved so much in terms of how schools address and support Lesbian and Gay
pupils but that one of the challenges that remains is the issue of how schools
negotiate trans issues and that members of the trans community feel very
vulnerable. Declan describes how it is very difficult for members of the trans
community who are experiencing any level of discomfort, comfort, challenge, or
distress around their own presentation of their own gender, or their gender identity.
He says that there are huge opportunities for schools to educate themselves in these
issues and that it is the responsibility of school communities to educate themselves
to support members of the trans community. He says that this is a space that is
under attack at the moment and how we should be very mindful of that and how the
LGBTQI+ community are a community, who can support one another.
Bella describes how Shout Out have been giving LGBTQ+ inclusion workshops to
students for the past nine years and that this is their core work. In the past nine
years, they have delivered almost 2000 workshops to tens of thousands of people.
Shout Out visit schools pretty much every single day and during COVID, they moved
online. Bella says that they speak to all students, not only LGBTQ+ students, and
that they focus on empathy building and thinking of empathy as a skill set with all
students that they meet. In their work they encourage students to realise that we all
have a relationship to our sexual orientation and to our gender identity, it just might
not be something that we have had to think about a huge amount, because those in
the majority don't think about it a lot. One of the main aspects that Shout Out focus on with students is that whatever is important to them about their identity, whether that is being from Cork, or supporting Dublin, or being really into theatre, that that is as important as our identities. LGBTQ+ equality helps everyone because it is about thinking past more simplistic, binarized ideas of gender and sexual expression.
Gavin also refers to how as educators, we are working as individuals to serve
children, young people, primarily, however, that the whole collective effort of doing
that traverses working with colleagues in an organisation serving an educational
purpose. He says that it is really important to think of staff, and the team who work
together, how they feel connected to, for example, the educational ethos, mission
values, etc. He mentions also how it's important in a community construction of
schooling to think about, perhaps children who are attending a school who identify as straight, but who have same sex parents and how sometimes ‘families can be
forgotten’. He gives the example of how we think about the kinds of admissions
forms that we have in schools, our parents, teachers, and even representations of
who are part of our school communities. These ‘artefacts’ in an organisation may not
be LGBTQI+ inclusive, albeit unintentionally, and ought to be on our radars.
Key to the overall discussion is the concept of intersectionality. Intersectionality is
about different layers of potential discrimination and it helps us to conceive of,
analyse and understand more deeply the complex (and often personal, identity-
related) nature of inequity. Contributors discuss how our identities are multiple and
that ‘we're not just one thing but are instead lots of different things’. Intersectionality,
originally connected to scholars of US Black feminism, is when we look at the
experience of somebody, particularly somebody who was othered and we say that
they're actually othered at multiple levels. Declan mentions how when you're
discriminated against or treated badly at multiple levels, it's much more difficult to
resist or fight back, because it's like as if you're ‘doomed’. Understanding the
sociological significance of ‘othering’ and ‘intersectionality’ is critical for educators to
approach LGBTQI+ issues in education, as well as to conceive of the rationale for
the prospects collective action through allyship offers not only the LGBTQI+
community, but the entire community as a whole for generations to come.
Tune in to hear more! A very important episode for teachers, students, school
management, parents, teacher educators, policy makers and many more.
My guest in this episode is Professor Aileen Kennedy. Professor Kennedy is Professor of Practice in Teacher Education and Director of Teacher Education in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. She graduated as a primary teacher and having taught for six years in Clydebank moved on to become the first ever Professional Officer at the General teaching Council of Scotland. From there she took up a lecturing post at Strathclyde and after 15 years moved to the University of Edinburgh where she spent 5 years developing a radical new Initial Teacher Education programme that qualifies graduates to teach across the primary/secondary transition, working in an explicitly activist way to progress social justice in schools and their communities. In 2020 she returned to Strathclyde to take up a position as Professor of Practice in Teacher Education. Professor Kennedy is currently the Director of Teacher Education in the School of Education in Strathclyde, working with colleagues and wider stakeholders to enhance and promote work in teacher education policy and pedagogy. Professor Kennedy is informed in her work by an activist approach which puts social justice and transformative learning front and centre. She believes that Sociology of Education found her rather than her finding it and that she had a somewhat unintentional journey into it. I spoke to her about her career, her work and research, her interest in and commitment to equity, fairness, social justice and much more within Initial Teacher Education.
We talk about the Scottish Initial Teacher Education system and the similarities and differences with the Irish system, how ITE in Scotland has developed and progressed over time. She describes how innovative routes of ITE in Scotland address various challenges in the system including recruitment challenges around particular geographical areas, challenges of recruitment in particular subjects, underrepresentation of certain groups in teaching at both concurrent and consecutive levels and the challenge of attracting applicants back into teaching. Professor Kennedy elaborates on her episode title and explains that in her view that while ITE programmes promote and are based on a view of social justice that underpins ITE provision that this is something that has evolved over time through a process from an initial aspiration to enactment. She is keen to explore how social justice is enacted and how we see it in ITE programmes and that ITE students not only see how we teach through a social justice lens but also how students learn through a social justice lens. She talks about social justice as a way of being as well as a set of knowledge and pedagogical approaches, something that is an all- encompassing embodied approach.
We discuss what the research tells us about social justice in ITE and how that might impact on students’ outcomes. She refers to how politically the disadvantage of certain groups is prioritised at different times in ITE and in the Scottish case that there have been focused efforts to address poverty and attempts to close the poverty related attainment gap supported by research that tells us which groups of young people are less likely to achieve at school and how best to mitigate and organise and deliver teaching.
Professor Kennedy talks about critical pedagogy, transformative learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, professional activism as areas of research she is interested in and draws on in her work with ITE and in her research. We discuss the challenges of conceptualising and delivering the ITE curriculum cognisant of the learning outcomes requirements, time constraints and other mandated priorities. She describes how she led the development of an innovative new Masters-level initial teacher education (ITE) programme whilst at the University of Edinburgh. This programme adopted an explicit activist approach which put social justice and transformative learning frontand centre. She recalls how her students were supported to co-create their learning experience with teacher educators and her learning about assessment in general and we discuss the perennial issue of the purpose of assessment as simply giving a grade or classification or assessment for genuine learning.
We veer off course a little and talk about the ‘doing’ of research that supports our practice as teacher educators generally and more specifically research that supports ITE provision and reconceptualization. Professor Kennedy discusses the concept of ‘assessment’ of student teachers which is a contested and challenging space and the different approaches to this. We discuss the practicalities of school placement, the role of various stakeholders including mentor teachers in the assessment of student teachers as part of a tri-partite agreement.
In a message to student teachers she reminds us that the enactment of social justice can’t ever be something that teacher educators just deliver and that student teachers should feel entitled to be part of the enactment of social justice and to have conversations with all stakeholders and contribute to the enactment as they have more power at their disposal as student teachers than maybe they think and enactment is only ever something that is driven by a whole community.
This is a must listen episode for teacher educators, student teachers, policy makers, school management, teachers and parents. As Irish teacher educators embark on the process of reconceptualising initial teacher education programmes within the Céim framework this episode gives plenty to think about. It promotes the centrality of social justice in ITE that scaffolds, underpins, overarches and frames a process of enactment over time. Globally teacher education continues to undergo much transformation and reform that is driven by a neo-liberal approach of accountability and standardised approaches while the reality on the ground is that that the preparation of teachers and teaching is a messy, complex and nuanced activity that is both broad and deep and affords many opportunities to be innovative and radical. Professor Aileen Kennedy’s offer views on this and much more besides in this episode, tune in to hear more.
My guest in this episode is Dr. Dylan Scanlon. Dylan is a member of staff in the Physical Education and Sports Science (PESS) department in the University of Limerick, he also works with the National Student Engagement Programme (NSTEP) and the National Forum. Dylan completed his PhD research in the PESS department in the University of Limerick under the supervision of Professor Ann Mac Phail and Dr. Antonio Calderon. His PhD followed a curriculum policy through different curriculum spaces, during which he worked with the Leaving Certificate Physical Education subject which he followed over two years by interviewing curriculum makers, professional development teachers and students as they enacted curriculum policy over that time. His interest in the Sociology of Education is twofold, he completed a Masters in the Sociology of Sport and Exercise with a focus on Physical Education and in his PhD research he focused on how Sociology of Education enables us to look at teachers as policy actors and the concept of policy enactment. In this episode Dylan discusses his PhD research and how teachers ‘do’ curriculum policy work and the role of teacher agency in this. He refers to Stephen Ball’s work on Policy enactment rather than focusing on curriculum policy ‘implementation’. Dylan refers to the concept of policy enactment as being a process which is not linear but that is ‘messy’ and complex and looks at multiple different people in multiple different spaces. He mentions how when we look at schools that we see them as a policy enactment context built on a myriad of different interrelated contexts which gives a snapshot of how complex schools actually are and how teachers are policy actors within this complexity. He refers to Ball’s eight actor roles or policy hats within which teachers ‘wear’ different hats within the space they find themselves in as they operate from different perspectives of enacting and ‘doing’ the policy. Dylan also refers to Mark Priestly’s work on teacher agency and figurational sociology to understand how teachers ‘do curriculum policy work and how important communities of learners are in supporting teachers in their ‘doing’. He talks about the concept of ‘agency’ as being an ill-defined complex concept and connected to this he discusses the concept of ‘teacher agency’. He offers a view of ‘agency’ informed by Mark Priestly’s work as something achieved in either the past or to be achieved in the future as a result of someone’s efforts, the resources available to them, the contextual and structural factors in a particular situation but that agency is in fact enacted in the present. Dylan believes that we need to move away from a discourse that positions a huge amount of belief on the agency of a teacher, something a teacher holds as such and that we never actually fully ‘achieve’ agency but rather that we are constantly working on it and enacting it as interdependent actors which either enables or constrains the achievement of agency. He focuses on the achieving of agency rather than the achievement of agency. He stresses the importance of communities of learners and quotes from his PhD supervisor, Professor Ann Mac Phail who says that “ we need to stop working in isolation and work with, and learn from, each other” (MacPhail, 2020, p 16). He talks about how if we try and do something on our own it can be challenging and difficult but how when we work together within communities of learners we can work towards achieving agency together within a community of learners of different stakeholders and how powerful this is. We also chat about how Covid has impacted on teacher agency and on curriculum policy work, if it been adversely affected and if there have there been gains during Covid. Another must listen episode that looks at the much mentioned sociological concepts of ‘agency’, ‘teacher agency’ and ‘curriculum policy’ and how this translates into real curriculum policy enactment in real time by real teachers. If you are a practising teacher, student teacher, school leader, policy maker, CPD provider, teacher educator or just interested in education and curriculum policy this episode offers a refreshing view on a non-linear, complex, relational process driven approach which allows for achieving of agency by teachers and challenges us to look differently at the concept of teachers being ‘agents of change’ within what can be a rigid education system. Tune in and listen for more.
My guest this episode is Rachel O Connor. Rachel is Principal in Ramsgrange Community School in Co. Wexford since 2013. Rachel is also Vice President of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), she works as a leadership associate with the Professional Development Support Team (PDST) and is also a mentor for newly appointed principals with the Centre for School Leadership (CSL).
Rachel is a graduate of Maynooth University and started her teaching career in Coláiste Bríde in Clondalkin in Dublin. She moved to Wexford and taught in Loreto Secondary School in Wexford before becoming a Deputy Principal in North Wexford and from there to Ramsgrange Community School. Ramsgrange Community School is a rural DEIS Band 1 coeducational post-primary school, situated out on the Hook peninsula in South West Wexford. Ramsgrange is one of 100 community schools and offers a varied and diverse curriculum at both Junior and Senior Cycle.
We start by discussing connections and manifestation of Sociology of Education in school and the concepts of equity, inequality and equality. Rachel describes how she sees herself as a facilitator of learning and teaching in her role as school principal and how in educational disadvantage that sometimes there are opportunities set up for many and not for some that principals do their very best to ensure that there is greater equity across the board and where possible “balancing the books” in favour of an overall equitable experience for all.
Rachel mentions that as a DEIS rural school it is important to think outside the box, opening the doors, being visible and being available to parents and families, inviting parents to be part of the school, to be connected and building up relationships between the families, the community and the school. She describes how an inclusive pedagogy enhances access for all students to learning and how that is really important where there is a very diverse range of students. She describes how mutual thoughtfulness and respect of both teachers and students are critical to the inclusive pedagogy. Rachel explains how a Restorative Practice approach has led to a very tangible impact on the climate and the culture of her school and has enhanced the social capital of the school.
We discuss the core values of having restorative and resilient conversations underpinned by trust, integrity, acceptance and tolerance and how important these core values are. Rachel also talks about the continuum of support in schools (support for one, support for some and support for all) and how students are prioritised for support on the basis of need, not just arising from empirical data but also on the basis of soft data established through links with the parents, the family and the school, the NCCA passport and much more.
We discuss key challenges for families and students to engagement in school. Rachel believes that subject choice is so important to motivate students and to create opportunities for students to pursue subjects they like and that they are interested in and how this informs choices for the students to pursue after Leaving Certificate. We talk about how there are many options for students post Leaving Certificate and that not all students go to or need to go to College but may instead pursue other routes of interest which have been established in school through subject and programme choice. Rachel focuses on how the greatest opportunities and optimal educational outcomes accrue for students who attend school regularly and how in her school that they promote attendance through the provision of student-centred, student-focused programmes and by targeting the families through the School Completion Programme offering support and pastoral systems at both student and family levels.
We discuss many aspects and examples of how best schools and families connect and continue to connect despite many challenges including Covid and moving ‘from functioning to flourishing’. This is such an inspiring interview that focuses on many aspects of Sociology of Education as they present in a rural post-primary Community School under Rachel O Connor’s leadership and guidance. There are multiple key messages in this podcast episode that will resonate with parents, teachers, students, student teachers, researchers and anyone interested in education. Join us and learn more.
My guest in this episode is Tracie Tobin. Tracie is Principal of St Michael’s Infant School in Limerick City. She graduated from Mary Immaculate College in 1996 with a
B.Ed. degree and in 2008 with a Graduate Diploma in Special Educational Needs.She is particularly interested in the Maths Recovery Programme and completed a
Master’s in Education on this topic in 2009.
Tracie is dedicated to educational disadvantage and has worked in DEIS schools for all of her teaching career. She was elected to the Teaching Council in 2016 where
she represents the primary teachers of Munster. She is currently serving her second four-year term. She is a member of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation’s National Equality Committee where she has represented the teachers of Limerick and Kerry since 2011. Tracie is also chairperson of Bedford Row Family Project which is based in Limerick City. This fosters a strong link between her work in education to the community and outreach programmes offered by the Project to families affected by imprisonment. Tracie is currently the co-lead on the City Connects Implementation Team, a pilot project based in the North East Inner City.
In this episode Tracie describes her own educational journey through both primary and post-primary school and how she was inspired to become a teacher, attending Mary Immaculate College as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate student and onto her current position as Principal of St Michael’s Infant School. We discuss the concept of an infant school and infant education and the importance of infant education as one of the most (if not the most) important aspects of a child’s education. Tracie describes how in her view that DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) is one of the main success stories of Irish education. She emphasises how in her school the emphasis on literacy and numeracy through DEIS was not only very beneficial for the pupils but also for staff as they were offered excellent CPD and training opportunities to implement a variety of programmes.
Tracie also emphasises the importance of school attendance and how every day in school is important regardless of the class they are in but especially in Junior Infants when the initial formative skills are embedded. Tracie describes the diverse nature of the pupil profile in her school and how an inclusive approach enables all children to participate and engage in school. We discuss how connections are made by the school with parents and grandparents in Tracie’s school and how parents engage in a number of different initiatives in the school. Tracie has herself reached out to various agencies in Limerick to further enable meaningful connections and provide a wraparound service for the children in her school. She describes the Oscailt network in Limerick and how it works across both primary and post-primary schools to ensure that families have a positive and integrated experience of school through the EDNEP project.
We talk about many aspects of connections between the Family and the School and how optimising these connections is so beneficial to families and to the pupils in terms of their progression and educational outcomes. Tracie believes that it is her role and the role of educators to empower parents to realise how important they are
in the lives of their children.
This is an honest, energetic and encouraging listen that demonstrates real Sociology of Education in action in an infant school. Tracie is both dedicated and ambitious for her pupils and their families, this is underpinned by a very compelling social justice approach that is evidenced throughout the episode. For parents, teachers, student-teachers, educators, researchers, policy-makers this is a must-listen episode.
My guest in this podcast episode is Professor Emer Smyth, Emer is a Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). She is Co-Principal Investigator of Growing Up in Ireland (GUI), together with Dorothy Watson, and joint research area coordinator for education.
Her main research interests centre on education, school to work transitions, gender and comparative methodology. She has conducted a number of studies on the effects of schooling contexts on student outcomes, including Do Schools Differ? She led the Post-Primary Longitudinal Study (PPLS), which followed a cohort of young people from the first year of second-level education onwards. Emer has also used GUI data to write reports and journal articles on the transition into primary school, arts and cultural participation among children and young people, spatial variation in child outcomes and the effects of being in a multi-grade class, among other topics.
In this episode Professor Smyth describes how the resources that a family has (money, educational qualifications of parents, love of reading etc) impact and influence a child’s life with specific reference to how pupils progress at school and how the educational system itself shapes outcomes and trajectories for pupils.
She refers to the interaction between the structures we live in and live by and our own experiences and how that plays out over the life-course in particular which is interactive and dynamic. She mentions how longitudinal data can help us to understand how experiences and advantage and disadvantage accumulates over the life-course.
We discuss the Post-Primary Longitudinal Study (PPLS) which was very student-focused and research reports from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) data, also very child-focused and comparisons between Irish based research with global research, engagement of post-primary students and much more.
We talk about diversity in the teaching profession and how ethnicity and nationality
background in particular as diversity factors merits further research attention. She believes that the class gap between teachers and many students is a challenge and how while we are comfortable discussing disadvantage we are not good at naming social class as an issue in education.
We look at research possibilities that students and researchers could focus on including relationships (teachers and students), ability groupings, impact of Covid and further inequalities in short term and long term. Professor Smyth emphasises how there is a high level of trust in the education system in Ireland and how there are very high levels of care evident in the education system with strong indicators of care at all levels. She emphasises how research has shown consistently that for both younger and older students in Ireland
how important relationships and the quality of relationships between teachers and students are. She believes it is the biggest influence on outcomes overall.
This is a really enlightening and informative episode which will be of interest to all student teachers and may be useful in particular those preparing to or undertaking research on their ITE programmes. It will also be useful for teacher educators, teachers, parents, school management and researchers and anyone interested in education in general.
My guest in this podcast episode is Dr. Vivian Rath. Vivian is an adjunct teaching fellow in Trinity College Dublin and recently completed his Ph.D on the “social engagement experiences of disabled students in higher education in Ireland”. He obtained a Master’s in management from Smurfit Business School where he researched the employment of graduates with disabilities. He is a member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Disability Advisory Committee. This committee has a role in the monitoring of the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He has extensive experience providing supports to people with disabilities accessing education and employment opportunities. A person with a disability, Vivian has been a disability activist for many years, campaigning for greater participation of people with disabilities in public and political life.
In this episode, Vivian discusses the social engagement of disabled students in Higher Education including in Initial Teacher Education. We talk about his current work and his research and how his research is significant in terms of creating awareness and seeking to widen participation in Higher Education with a specific focus on disabled students. Vivian believes that we have a long way to go to address real engagement of disabled people in Initial Teacher Education. We discuss barriers for disabled students in accessing the teaching profession at the entry point and challenges for disabled student teachers on ITE courses.
He emphasises the importance of the visibility of disabled teachers across the continuum of teacher education and how role models are critical for aspiring teachers and for enabling a more diverse teaching profession. Vivian recalls his own education journey from post-primary school onwards and describes how he has progressed through many stages of education up to his PhD and beyond.
This is a must-listen episode; enlightening, encouraging and most of all very interesting. Join us!
My guest in this podcast episode is Dr. Shelli-Ann Garland. Shelli-Ann is a teaching fellow in the School of Education in Trinity College Dublin and a research assistant on the @DEEPEN project Her research interests include Sociology and Foundations of Education, Educational Stratification, Teacher Education, Lifelong Learning and Volunteer Leadership.
In this episode Shelli-Ann introduces some of the main Sociology of Education theories and how they look in “real-time” and describes what our “sociological imagination” is, “the ability to see things socially and how they interact and influence each other”. We talk about Shelli-Ann’s own research on volunteer identity, informal learning and community based learning, connections and disconnects between policy and practice and how Covid has impacted how we teach Sociology of Education. Shelli-Ann has some questions for me too around my own research and sociological connections between family and community and the school.
This podcast includes interviews between Dr. Melanie Ní Dhuinn, an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education in Trinity College Dublin and leading researchers, academics, school principals, social justice activists, teachers and policymakers as they talk about the Sociology of Education and how it looks in day to day reality in its many forms and guises.
The podcast has been developed as a resource to support student teachers and others to try and make sense of and demystify some of the abstract and dense sociological theories and recognise them in real-time in practice. The podcast covers different Sociological Perspectives, Exploring LGBTQ+ educational experiences, Social Justice, Equity, Equality & Access, Disability and Inclusion, Cultural Capital, Values, Beliefs, Global Citizenship, The Family and the School and more.