National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education: A review and a research agenda
No full textThe evolution of fossil fuel industry tactics for obstructing climate action, fromoutright denial of climate change to more subtle techniques of delay, is undergrowing scrutiny. One key site of ongoing climate obstructionism identified byresearchers, journalists, and advocates is higher education. Scholars haveexhaustively documented how industry-sponsored academic research tends tobias scholarship in favor of tobacco, pharmaceutical, food, sugar, lead, andother industries, but the contemporary influence of fossil fuel interests onhigher education has received relatively little academic attention. We reportthe first literature review of academic and civil society investigations into fossil fuel industry ties to higher education in the United States, United Kingdom,Canada, and Australia. We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry, and that universities' lack of transparency about their partnerships with this industry poses a challenge to empirical research. We propose a research agenda of topi-cal and methodological directions for future analyses of the prevalence and consequences of fossil fuel industry–university partnerships, and responses to them
From language to literacy: Supporting the development of early childhood educator’s knowledge and skills in phonological awareness
No full textBeing literate facilitates greater functionality in today’s literate society. Unfortunately, not all children are afforded opportunities to build foundational reading skills in their earliest years. Children’s later reading skills are dependent on the acquisition of a series of phonological skills which form part of the emergent literacy (EL) continuum. Thus, educators need to be sufficiently informed to ensure the acquisition of phonological awareness (PA) skills. This study aims to establish to what extent if at all, a professional development and learning programme on PA in a situated-learning context impacts the knowledge and skills of participating educators, and in so doing influences their professional learning and practice.
This Collaborative Action Research study was set in a small, private sessional pre-school in a rural town in Ireland. It involved the provision of a professional development and learning programme, tailored to the needs of the educators, which included workshops focussed on related content, followed by on-site observations, coaching, modelling and feedback. Opportunities to reflect, both through discussion and journaling, were also significant components of the process. Data gathered included pre- and post-intervention questionnaires, observations that included field-notes and audio-recordings, debriefing discussions, researcher and practitioner reflective journals, and a final focus group.
This study unearthed a lacuna in knowledge and skills, specifically related to EL and PA, amongst these educators. However, it clearly illustrates that by engaging in a customised programme of professional development and learning, educator’s knowledge, skills, and practice in this area can change. Moreover, findings reveal a strong correlation between depth of knowledge, heightened confidence, and more proficient pedagogical skills. Arrival at this conclusion required various professional development and learning methods, of which coaching was deemed the most effective. This included in-situ modelling and individual feedback, coupled with the gradual emergence of a community of practice, which fostered deeper reflection and embedded learning.
At policy level, this study points to the need for adjustments to national curriculum, to include PA skills’ development and reflect the extended duration children spend in early childhood settings today. Concomitantly, the inclusion of PA development skills within initial teacher education (ITE) programmes and continuing professional development for early years’ educators is recommended
An Evaluation of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Influence of Neoliberalism on Teaching Skills in the Senior Cycle
No full textSkill development, in various forms, has always been a key part of education. However, over time, the
composition, emphasis and implementation of these skills within second-level education settings in
Ireland have changed. The move from vocational skills to softer skills is evident. This has been as a
result of the societal, economic, political and cultural changes (Hoskins and Crick, 2010). The skills
agenda is not going away, it is still central to educational developments in Ireland. The proposed new
Key competencies in senior cycle (draft) (NCCA, 2023) that matches skill development to seven key
competencies to be targeted throughout upper second-level education as part of current developments
is a testament to this policy agenda. However, while skills have been a part of upper second-level
education since 2005 (NCCA, 2006), teachers interpret and action the teaching of skills within their
own classroom, which can mean that this is not always enacted as set out in the curriculum. This
could mean that alternative skills are being taught or skills on the written framework are being taught
for different reasons. This study therefore explores the impact of neoliberal values and influences on
the teaching of skills in Senior Cycle (SC) education and explores how neoliberalism may be
operating in how teachers formulate a perspective around the teaching of skills. The research
investigated firstly what were the participants views on the teaching of “skills” in SC education, as
well as whether there were specific “skills” more valued by the participants at SC level.
This research gathered data using nonprobability convenience sampling where existing participants
recruited other participants using the chain referral method for focus group discussion. There were
four focus groups which were made up of four participants. These met once to discuss the research
topic. The data gathered were analysed using the lens of Bernstein’s Pedagogical Device (PD).
Bernstein proposes that knowledge is ordered and disordered through the act of communication by
three inter-related rules: distributive, recontextualising and evaluative (Bernstein, 1990). These rules
firstly distribute and regulate power and meaning through the distribution of knowledge and identity,
which is then recontextualised and changed through specific pedagogic discourse. This is then
changed by the evaluative rules to construct the criteria of knowledge to be transmitted and acquired
(Singh, 2002). These rules were used to explore how teachers’ views and practices in teaching skills
have been influenced by ideology and power, which operate at all levels of society (Wright and
Froehlich, 2012). The analysis provided snapshots as to how these influences make an impact in
theorising how practices can be altered in relation to teachers formulating and teaching skills within
the SC.
Based on the data gathered and analysed from the focus groups, this study suggests that (1) teachers’
values have a significant influence on what skills are taught and why they are viewed as important. In
the main participants delineated these values as being focused on performativity and measurability in
helping students to prepare and achieve in examinations, (2) the students ability to retain and
reproduce the set curriculum was viewed as more important than teaching skills, (3) helping students
gain entry to third-level education as well as preparing students for their future careers took
precedence over teaching skills in this educational period (4) neoliberal elements have affected the
perceptions of teachers on teaching skills in SC education through various influences such as policy
reform, business partnerships and the focus on third-level education. Teachers illustrated how their
professional identity was impacted by neoliberal influences to the extent that they described their
work in technicist terms. The findings have implications for the current and future practices of
teachers teaching SC as well as those implementing policies in this area
Code-Red: Young People and their Exposure to Gambling Marketing through Media and Sport on the island of Ireland
No full textAcademics from Maynooth University and Ulster University have spent two years examining the exposure of young people on the island of Ireland to gambling marketing content while consuming their favourite sports on television and social media.
The project found that young people who lived on both sides of the border in Ireland were exposed to extremely high levels of gambling marketing when consuming some national and international sporting events. Young people are accessing this content on television but increasingly, and repeatedly over time, via social media on their mobile phones.
The research also found that gambling marketing saturation varies considerably across sports, channels and platforms. Gambling marketing was most prevalent in certain sports but was available both on television and social media at all times of the day.
It is clear that current gambling regulations and approaches in both jurisdictions are ineffective in limiting the exposure of young people to gambling marketing, and its frequency, when sports and media organisations are willing to carry them. Further, the health and community benefits of sport are seriously undermined if those sports are reliant on gambling marketing or gambling revenues.
The report concludes with a number of policy recommendations. The research was funded by the Irish government’s North-South Research Programme
SERT: A transformer based model for multivariate temporal sensor data with missing values for environmental monitoring
No full textEnvironmental monitoring is crucial to our understanding of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
The availability of large-scale spatio-temporal data from sources such as sensors and satellites allows us to
develop sophisticated models for forecasting and understanding key drivers. However, the data collected from
sensors often contain missing values due to faulty equipment or maintenance issues. The missing values rarely
occur simultaneously leading to data that are multivariate misaligned sparse time series. We propose two
models that are capable of performing multivariate spatio-temporal forecasting while handling missing data
naturally without the need for imputation. The first model is a transformer-based model, which we name SERT
(Spatio-temporal Encoder Representations from Transformers). The second is a simpler model named SST-ANN
(Sparse Spatio-Temporal Artificial Neural Network) which is capable of providing interpretable results. We
conduct extensive experiments on two different datasets for multivariate spatio-temporal forecasting and show
that our models have competitive or superior performance to those at the state-of-the-art
“This is Where the Care Can Step Up”: A Typology of Nurturing Pedagogies in Primary Schools Serving Low-Income Communities During COVID-19 Closures
No full textAll schools possess a duty of care towards their students. However, this duty of care falls unevenly across schools, with those serving low-income communities often responding to the material and psychological effects of poverty as a priority. This duty of care for such schools was placed into stark relief during the period of COVID-19 school closures, when structural inequalities in society became particularly pronounced. Previous research has drawn distinctions between different forms of caring enacted in schools serving low-income communities. These range from practices centred on children’s academic learning to those more concerned with children’s welfare and well-being—which, for the purposes of this paper, we term as academic nurturing and affective nurturing respectively. Others recognise the need for schools in low-income communities to perform a dual role and engage in both forms of nurturing simultaneously—which we term as critical nurturing. This paper presents findings based on case studies from three designated disadvantaged primary schools in Ireland during pandemic-related closures. It draws on interviews from the Children’s School Lives longitudinal study with the teachers, principals, and families of four Junior Infant children (typically aged four to five years). Our findings suggest a typology of nurturing pedagogies, with academic and affective nurturing emphasised to varying degrees across our three schools during this period. Narratives from interviewees also demonstrate the central role of school culture and leadership in achieving critical nurturing, with significant social justice implications for the education of children in schools serving low-income communities
“It’s Like a Baby Jail!” The impact of regimented daily routines on children’s participation in early childhood education.
No full textRoutines are the backbone of what is deemed a high-quality early years environment. When
routines are converted into an adult-regimented timetable that informs the day-to-day experiences
of children, a daily routine becomes a power structure that interferes with the self-rhythm of a
child, deciding when they can eat, play and go outside while demanding desired behaviours and
imbedding social norms. When a routine is designed for children and not by children, it presents a
practical dilemma where children’s participatory rights appear to be valued in theory but not
implemented in practice. By focusing on the daily routine of an early childhood environment
through a Foucauldian lens, this research explored the power dynamics that existed between adult
educators and children aged 2-4 years to understand how children’s forms of expression within an
adult-designed daily routine shaped their level of participation. Data collection was conducted by
children positioned as co-researchers equipped with head-mounted GoPro cameras to record their
daily routines that included outdoor play, art, snack and indoor free play, where video recall during
weekly focus groups provided opportunities for children to further express their views on the data
they recorded.
The findings highlighted the rawness of being a young child in education today and the
way in which children used acts of obedience and resistance to feel heard, valued and to participate,
but oftentimes were ignored or silenced by educators. These moments led to the research’s
development of the Ject Framework which highlights the various ways children experience power
and seek out ways to express themselves through the satisfaction of their self-rhythm. The Ject
Framework forms the basis of the Six Participation Personas of Power that highlights the
implications for participation when children’s self-rhythm is either satisfied or skewed in favour
of the adult’s self-rhythm. The conformist and revolutionary personas of Active Conformist,
Passive Conformist, Active Revolutionary, Passive Revolutionary, Secure Selective and Insecure
Selective were generated to highlight how children’s level of participation is shaped based on the
way a daily routine is enforced on them in early childhood environments.
This research generates further insight into the implementation issues relating to children's
participation rights, the role educational power structures play in silencing children and contributes
further thinking and rethinking about the daily power being enforced on children and the impact
this has on their ability to actively participate in their own lives
Reauthoring my career narrative towards hope and agency twenty years in Adult Guidance Counselling Practice.
No full textThe focus of this research is seeking to reflexively engage with my experiences of the impact of recent rapid transformations in my adult guidance counselling practice, culminating in working with increasing numbers of migrant learners. Inquiring into these experiences of finding myself at a crossroads in my career after twenty years in practice, questioning if I can continue in the role. I chose a narrative inquiry self-study methodology to engage with my narrative of these experiences and how I had constructed this narrative in relation to broader organisational, policy and societal narratives over time. The lens of System Theory Framework, storytelling narrative career counselling approach and Narrative Therapy Informed Approach are used to identify these four key emerging, dynamic and recursive themes: changing context and its impact; social justice - a core value; recommitment to self-care; connectedness and collaboration in practice. Engaging with these themes enabled a process of reauthoring to a more agentic, hopeful narrative of my practice. This research has the potential to be useful for other practitioners navigating contexts requiring rapid transformations in their practice. And it points to the potential of using these narrative career approaches in working with clients also navigating career transitions over their lifespan. Recommendations for further research are offered including moral distress in the field of guidance counselling and relevant career adaptability skills for working in neoliberal environments
Concerns and barriers surrounding the farm succession process – perception versus reality for beef farmers in Ireland
No full textGenerational renewal is widely acknowledged as key to the survival and sustainability of the European agricultural industry. In Ireland and many other European countries an aging farming population, and the lack of succession planning by farmers, are significant concerns regarding the future of the industry. Farm succession is a complex and multifaceted process with the literature highlighting one of its main barriers as a reluctance of older farmers to retire and effectively step-a-side to pass their farm onto the next generation. Such resistance of older farmers is undoubtedly a huge issue in terms of generational renewal of the Irish agricultural industry, however, it is important to understand that there are many sources of concern for farmers that can act as barriers to developing a succession plan. In this context, the objective of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of the concerns and barriers surrounding the farm succession process. Discussions on the topic of farm succession, which took place during semi-structured interviews and consultation meetings with 30 beef farmers in Ireland as part of an intervention programme to support farmers in succession planning, reveal that the source of such concerns appear to stem from two broad areas: successor identification concerns and financial and legal concerns. While acknowledging that such issues cause genuine concern for farmers, we argue that overcoming them may not be as difficult as some farmers may imagine. Hence a distinction between what constitutes real concerns versus what constitutes perceived concerns in the farm succession process emerges. The evidence gathered suggests that where farmers engage the services of professional advisors to discuss farm succession, many of those concerns can be alleviated. Consequently, by reflecting on the findings emerging and by highlighting the case of Irelands Succession Planning Advice Grant as a policy framework solution, we recommend for similar policy development in other countries facing the generational renewal challenge in agriculture. The novel findings emerging from this study provide a valuable contribution to the literature, to practice, and to policy development
Trending extinctions: online interest in recently extinct animals
No full textHalf of all species are predicted to face extinction by the end of the century. Despite this, awareness of certain species' extinctions remains surprisingly muted, highlighting the need to improve and quantify public awareness. We explore the connection between biodiversity loss and public awareness by quantifying the changes in online interest on Twitter (now known as X) and Wikipedia both before and after the extinctions of eight species and following their reclassification in the IUCN Red List. Our findings reveal that extinction announcements generally spike online interest for most species, albeit briefly on Twitter (i.e. tweets and retweets about species), while Wikipedia (i.e. article pageviews of species) exhibits a more prolonged interest. IUCN reports were generally not associated with increased interest. Coordinated media coverage, especially when aligned with broader environmental narratives and key events, enhanced the impact of extinction announcements. On Twitter, spatially we observed a shift from local to global interest of users following extinction. We also found a small subset of influential users on Twitter, including content creators and media organisations, who disproportionately shaped conservation discussions. Environmentally oriented individuals and organisations also play a significant role, collectively comprising a third of the top retweeted users. Overall, these results highlight the need for conservation bodies, such as the IUCN, to engage more directly both with media organisations and content creators in order to drive public interest for conservation efforts, especially for less charismatic species. The tragedy of species extinction necessitates such efforts to ensure sustained and meaningful public awareness. Our findings also show that while social media outlets can generate global interest quickly, which may drive public discussions regarding ongoing extinctions and potential future de-extinctions, this is likely to be short-lived, underscoring the importance of alternative platforms such as Wikipedia, which can foster longer-term engagement