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Current Practices in Religious Education in Catholic Primary Schools: Perspectives of Principals
Get PDFThe Primary Curriculum Framework for Primary and Special Schools (DE, 2023), published by the Department of Education, has resulted in changes to the treatment of Religious Education (RE) in the primary curriculum in the Republic of Ireland. RE is renamed as the Religious/Ethical/Multibelief, and Values Education – The Patron's Programme and the time allocated to teaching RE is reduced. This raises questions around how these changes will impact RE in Catholic primary
schools, where RE is central to the school’s ethos and identity.
This study investigates the perspectives of principals in Catholic primary schools regarding the importance, practices, and future of RE within the context of these curriculum developments. Drawing on interviews with ten principals, it explores their views on the importance of RE in their
schools, their experiences with current RE practices, and their perceptions of how the Primary Curriculum Framework for Primary and Special Schools (DE, 2023), may impact these practices.
By gathering principals’ insights, this research endeavours to provide an understanding of the current and future role of RE in Catholic primary education. Principals acknowledge RE's importance in fostering holistic education and ethos but admit that they face challenges such as a
lack of oversight, outdated policies, and limited support. The study identifies significant gaps in continuous professional development opportunities for teachers and principals, challenges in communication between Patrons and schools, and the impact of increased diversity in classrooms. The research highlights the need for enhanced support systems, including targeted professional development, clear accountability structures, and improved channels of communication between Patrons and schools. By addressing these gaps, RE can be repositioned as a key component of Catholic education, contributing to the holistic development of pupils and sustaining the ethos of
a Catholic primary school. The study contributes to the discourse on RE in Ireland, offering practical considerations for enhancing its role and effectiveness in Catholic primary schools
Between Interaction and Separation: Exploring the encampment policy experiences of refugees and host communities in Kakuma Refugee Camp, in Kenya.
Get PDFKenya’s longstanding role as a host country for displaced populations has been accompanied by enduring tensions between international obligations and national sociopolitical realities. Despite successive commitments to global and regional frameworks promoting refugee integration, the lived experience of displacement remains characterised
by containment, marginalisation, and precariousness. This study interrogates the policy of encampment as it is experienced by both refugees and host communities in Kakuma Refugee Camp, exploring how it shapes notions of integration and community relations.
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between May and July 2023 and analysed through a thematic framework, the research examines the ambivalences inherent in protracted displacement. It highlights how refugees articulate integration primarily as access to fundamental rights and freedoms, whereas host communities tend to frame it in terms of peaceful coexistence and equitable access to humanitarian resources. These divergent conceptualisations reflect not only personal and collective aspirations but also the structural conditions imposed by the humanitarian regime and the national state apparatus.
The findings further reveal the camp as a paradoxical space: a site of refuge from external violence, yet one where new forms of social suffering are produced. Experiences of encampment are differentiated along lines of nationality, gender, and socio-economic status, complicating simplistic narratives of protection or integration. Interactions between refugees and hosts oscillate between fragile solidarity and latent conflict, shaped by unequal access to aid, competition over limited resources, and exclusionary governance practices. Rather than integration being a linear or inevitable process, it emerges as a
contested terrain, where hopes for belonging are continually negotiated against the backdrop of structural inequality and political abandonment
Stochastic Functional Differential Equations and Optimal Consumption Problems
Get PDFThe first part of this thesis is concerned with the qualitative behaviour of path dependent stochastic differential equations, specifically equations of functional and Volterra type. We deeply investigate the effects of perturbations on stable linear systems. First, we provide a framework for characterising the solution space of perturbed linear integrodifferential Volterra convolution equations and their finite memory counterpart, namely perturbed linear functional differential equations. This improves upon classical admissibility theory which only provides sufficient conditions on the perturbations to ensure solutions are elements of a particular function space. Next we consider state independent stochastic perturbations and aim to characterise when the sample paths of the solution converge to zero almost surely and when the trajectories are almost surely p-integrable functions in time. We then shift our focus to perturbed equations with multiplicative noise and characterise the asymptotic behaviour of the mean square. Our findings indicate the pointwise behaviour of state independent perturbations is non-dominant and does not necessarily proliferate through to the solution. Rather the main quantity that determines the qualitative behaviour of the solution is a particular functional of the state independent perturbations, namely one must study the integral of the perturbations over compact intervals. It is this insight that leads to sharp characterisations of the qualitative behaviour of solutions.
The second part of this thesis is dedicated to a particular class of stochastic control problems arising in finance. We provide a novel approach to the optimal consumption-investment problem which aims to characterise the value function as the solution to an associated variational problem. The utility of this approach is twofold, it circumvents the need to analytically solve the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation while also providing a new set of tools to analyse the value function. Sharp estimates on the value function and the optimal policies are obtained via analysing the variational problem directly and employing standard techniques from the theory of elliptic partial differential equations
Indicators for Intellectual Disability Where No Formal Diagnosis Exists but Nursing Knowledge Demonstrates Grounds for a Formal Assessment: A Scoping Review
Get PDFGlobally, 1–3% of the population has an intellectual disability, but some remain undiagnosed, resulting in limited access to essential health and social care services, poor health outcomes, and higher risks of homelessness, substance abuse, and imprisonment. A formal
diagnosis enables early intervention and support. A scoping review was conducted to explore research on undiagnosed intellectual disability, screening processes, and identifying indicators. Method: The scoping review search was conducted using academic databases such as CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, and PubMed, along with eight grey literature sources. In addition, the reference lists of the included studies were explored. Information specialists supported and guided the search process. The search included qualitative, quantitative, review, and mixed-method research studies published in English between 2000 and 2024.
Two reviewers screened papers for eligibility by title, abstract, and full text. Result: A total of 11,475 papers were screened, with 57 papers from various countries included in the review. Indicators of intellectual disability were identified in three settings: (1) educational settings (preschool, primary, and secondary schools); (2) social care services, including
homeless and community services; and (3) criminal services, such as courts, probation, and prisons, highlighting the wide applicability of findings. These indicators were linked to “experiences”, “behaviours”, “challenges”, and “observations”. Conclusion: This review emphasised the importance of early diagnosis by adopting appropriate assessment
tools, which require national screening policies. It also highlighted the essential role of professionals working in intellectual disability services in identifying and supporting undiagnosed individuals, particularly within high-risk populations. Implication: The review’s findings will guide policy, practice, and research recommendations for enhancing the early
identification of people with intellectual disabilities
EDGE360: Edge-Enabled Multi-Agent DRL for Region-Aware Rate Adaptation Solution to Enhance Quality of 360° Video Streaming
Get PDFOptimal tile-based bitrate allocation improves the Quality of Experience (QoE) for adaptive 360° video streaming across multiple clients in heterogeneous network environments; however, it is challenging as it implies accurate viewport prediction, finest tile-based bitrate reservation, and maintaining QoE fairness, particularly under constrained network conditions. This paper proposes a strategy named EDGE360, that employs an edge-driven Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning
(MADRL) solution for rate adaptation to improve the joint QoE
in DASH-based rich media content delivery based on adaptive
viewport prediction and Video Multi-method Assessment Fusion
(VMAF) corresponding tiling granularity selection. Cooperative
strategies among agents in the central critic network are crucial
for addressing the complexity of network instances at the edge
and optimizing media streaming bitrate assignment in multipleclient scenarios. Therefore, EDGE360 aims to implement the
Counterfactual Multi-Agent Policy Gradients (COMA) based
on 5G network traces to train agents in policies that optimize
individual client QoE and fairness among clients, resulting in
an improved rich streaming experience. At the edge, a tilebased quality monitor evaluates viewport trajectories, buffer
status, and network throughput, employing deep learning to
forecast optimal tile bitrate allocation, which is formulated as
an MDP and solved with MADRL. Based on extensive experimentation, EDGE360 surpasses state-of-the-art adaptive bitrate
algorithms by achieving the highest average reward, outperforming RAPT360, 360SRL, and BOLA360 by 8.12%, 11.86%, and
18.00%, respectively, demonstrating superior convergence and
refinemen
The Diplomacy of State Derecognition: When and Why States Lose Diplomatic Recognition
Get PDFThis article examines the overlooked practice of state derecognition as a dynamic instrument of contemporary international politics. Drawing on a critical‐geopolitics framework, it demonstrates how the strategic withdrawal of diplomatic recognition undermines assumptions of permanent sovereignty and reconfigures territorial orders. Through comparative case studies of Taiwan, Western Sahara, and Kosovo, the article shows that derecognition is rarely grounded in changes to legal criteria for statehood; instead, it reflects broader political calculations, including economic leverage, domestic political consolidation, and geopolitical influence. By treating derecognition as a deliberate diplomatic contestation strategy launched by the former base state vis-à-vis the secessionist state, this article reveals the contingent and reversible nature of sovereignty itself and the protracted nature of statehood conflicts. It concludes that the increasing use of derecognition as a tool of statecraft erodes international norms, intensifies great-power rivalries, and poses a significant challenge to the international order. This research offers a critical framework for understanding the contested dynamics of statehood in an era of shifting geopolitical alignments
Border Carbon Adjustment Mechanisms: Legal and Political Barriers, and the Reform of the WTO
Get PDFIn this chapter, we argue that a first step to reconciling the climate and trade regimes is to ensure that the prices of internationally traded products reflect the climate-related harm of producing and consuming these goods. After delineating the role for border carbon adjustment mechanisms to internalize climate externalities, we broaden the discussion to potential reforms of the vision, rules, and procedures of the WTO system, to better align it with the sustainability agenda
Methodological issues in visible LED therapy dermatological research and reporting
Get PDFThe advent of mass-market Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has seen considerable interest in potential dermatological applications of LED light photobiomodulation (PBM) for a range of conditions, with a thriving market for direct-to-consumer LED treatments, including red light, blue light, and yellow light wavelengths. Evidence of efficacy is however mixed, and studies report a wide range of irradiances and wavelengths as well as outcome measures, rendering interpretation, comparison, and
even efficacy evaluation prohibitive and impeding evidence synthesis
Methodological issues in visible LED therapy dermatological research and reporting
No full textThe advent of mass-market Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has seen considerable interest in potential dermatological applications of LED light photobiomodulation (PBM) for a range of conditions, with a thriving market for direct-to-consumer LED treatments, including red light, blue light, and yellow light wavelengths. Evidence of efficacy is however mixed, and studies report a wide range of irradiances and wavelengths as well as outcome measures, rendering interpretation, comparison, and
even efficacy evaluation prohibitive and impeding evidence synthesis