NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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“You’re a teacher you’re a mother, you’re a worker”: Gender inequality during COVID‐19 in Ireland
No full textThe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared a global pandemic in March 2020. Unlike previous highly contagious diseases that brought the threat of global instability this century such as SARS-CoV, Zika virus (ZIKV), Swine flu (H1N1), and the Avian flu (H5N1), COVID-19 was unable to be contained. Global restrictions were implemented to curb the spread of the virus, which included but were not limited to the closure of all educational institutions and the advice to engage in remote working. This study aims to understand the experience of working mothers who managed work and home duties during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. Thirty working mothers were interviewed in this study, and qualitative analyses were conducted to gain insight into their work and family life during the restrictions. The findings of the analysis indicate that working mothers have been negatively impacted by COVID-19 in relation to their psychological well-being, experiences of negative emotions, and the redefinition of family dynamics, in which working mothers have adopted additional and disproportionate care burden. These findings are consistent with the current research arguing that COVID-19 has highlighted an increase in the gender gap in domestic labor as well as the undermining of career advancement for working mothers
Developing and Understanding Language to Foster a Growth Mindset Amongst Pupils in a Primary Classroom.
No full textOur awareness of and attitude towards our language can have a significant impact on our daily lives and our engagement with each other, the curriculum and the environment. Every child has the potential to be exceptional. It is our responsibility as educators to assist them in discovering and fulfilling their potential. To achieve this aim, we must shift our mindsets and trust in our ability to increase learning for all students. As I began to reflect on this, I realised that this was the perfect opportunity to examine if I was truly encouraging a positive growth mindset in my classroom. I have had my class for the past two years and from the beginning some of the children struggled to show positive self-esteem, lacked the ability to face challenges and viewed their mistakes in a negative light. I wanted to foster a greater sense of self-worth among the children through my practice.
The self-study action research project aimed to explore the benefits of teaching positive language to children to foster and develop a growth mindset within the classroom. It was a class-based study looking to explore the role I played as the teacher in creating these conditions and in providing opportunities for the participants involved. The research took place in a senior national school with a sample of 26 sixth class children. The study involved a twelve-week intervention covering several concepts. Methods for data collection were pre and post intervention questionnaires, rating scales, nine diamond surveys, structured and unstructured observations, pupil reflective journals and a teacher reflective journal.
Drawing on the work of Carol Dweck, we attempted to create a classroom ethos around the topic of a growth mindset which cultivated an environment of growth, possibility and positivity. Through analysing the findings that are presented in this study, I believe my teaching of positive language to children has improved in supporting the development of student attitudes towards subjects they find challenging and has also helped them in the wider world.
In doing so, I have learned that my educational ideals of student care, student voice and positivity are critical components of my future practice
Psychological distress and adaptation to the COVID-19 crisis in the United States
No full textThere is growing concern that the COVID-19 crisis may have long-standing mental health effects across society particularly amongst those with pre-existing mental health conditions. In this observational population-based study, we examined how psychological distress changed following the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States and tested whether certain population subgroups were vulnerable to persistent distress during the crisis. We analyzed longitudinal nationally representative data from eight waves of the Understanding America Study (UAS) collected between March 10th and July 20th, 2020 (N = 7319 Observations = 46,145). Differences in distress trends were examined by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and household income and by the presence of a pre-existing mental health diagnosis. Psychological distress was assessed using the standardized total score on the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4). On average psychological distress increased significantly by 0.27 standard deviations (95% CI [0.23,0.31], p < .001) from March 10–18 to April 1–14, 2020 as the COVID-19 crisis emerged and lockdown restrictions began in the US. Distress levels subsequently declined to mid-March levels by June 2020 (d = –0.31, 95% CI [–0.34, –0.27], p < .001). Across the sociodemographic groups examined and those with pre-existing mental health conditions we observed a sharp rise in distress followed by a recovery to baseline distress levels. This study identified substantial increases in distress in the US during the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis that largely diminished in the weeks that followed and suggests that population level resilience in mental health may be occurring in response to the pandemic
An Overview of the Traveller Mediation Service Peer Mediation in Prisons Programme 2016 to 2019
No full textDue to the highly restrictive nature of the prison environment, with large numbers of
diverse personalities living in extremely close proximity to one another and some with a
propensity for violent behaviour, prisons can be dangerous places. Prisons are too often
places of conflict, violence, and fear (Condry and Scharff Smith, 2018), where conflict
can develop and escalate rapidly. Such conflict almost always has a negative impact,
both physically and mentally, on prisoners and staff. It was in this context that TMS
developed a unique and innovative approach to conflict prevention and resolution within
the Irish Prison Service (IPS)..
Inside mediation. Book review: How Mediation Works: Resolving Conflict through Talk, by Angela Cora Garcia, (2019) UK, Cambridge University Press.
No full textTwo Roads Diverge: Mapping the Path of Learning for Novice Programmers Through Large Scale Interaction Data and Neural Network Classifiers
No full textLearning to program is a fundamental part of Computer Science education. To
become a proficient programmer, one must become competent at both code
comprehension and code production. Research shows that the most effective way
to teach programming to students is through practical exercises. However, the
increasing numbers of students in Computer Science classes means it is difficult to
correct assignments and provide timely feedback. This can result in fewer practical
assignments and/or less useful feedback for each student. Automated grading tools,
and understanding of how novice programmers learn to code, is essential for these
growing numbers of students. The Maynooth University Learning Environment, or
MULE, was built to address this challenge. MULE is a cloud-based learning
environment built from the ground up with the goal of teaching introductory
programming courses in an authentic manner while facilitating the collection of
large-scale behavioural data to support Learning Analytics. In this thesis,
behavioural interaction data and code written by students in MULE is used to
investigate the differences between successful and unsuccessful programming
student behaviour, with the use of data analysis and Neural Network classifiers.
The result is a method of classification that predicts early on if a student is likely to
be in the top or bottom 50% of grades in the class with up to 87% accuracy, and a
model of the path of learning for successful students, including key times,
assignments, and topics during the introduction to programming module when the
higher and lower achieving students diverge in behaviour
Speaking into the Abyss: An Exploratory Study of Academics’ Use of Educational Technology and its Impact on Practice.
No full textThis is a study of educational technology use in academic practice undertaken
in an Irish Higher Education setting. Based on interviews with fifteen
academics, the enquiry attempts to respond to Selwyn’s (2010) call for an
increase in social scientific accounts of technology use which pay heed to the
‘state-of-the-actual’, examining the actuality and consequences of technology
use on academic practice and identity.
Efforts to understand the socially constructed nature of technology use draw
upon the researcher’s own varied experiences as an educational technologist,
academic, and academic manager. The development of understanding is also
guided by a theoretical framework drawn from Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of
Practice (Bourdieu, 1977) and its interlocking concepts of habitus, field, and
capital.
The key research questions addressed in the study highlight a varied and
meaningful integration of technology into academic practice. Academic use of
technology is shown to be strongly influenced by implicitly held knowledge of
teaching and underlying belief systems which are shaped by assumptions,
technological truisms, pseudo theories, and folk pedagogies. Technology use is
also shown to be shaped by the surrounding organisational culture and the
normative technological practices carried out within the academic disciplines.
In examining the consequences of technology adoption for the academic, the
research highlights impact on wellbeing, relationships, emotional state, and
sense of place. Technology is exposed as a site of tension as academics struggle
with fears, questions of ideology, discourse, challenges to identity and
destabilising shifts in practice.
Most importantly, the research exposes educational technology as a site of
struggle. In an effort to mediate between agency and structure, these academics
seek to hold autonomy over their own practices while also attempting to align
their practice with the broader organisational culture of technology use.
Tensions arise between academics, students, and academic management, as
each group seeks power over what forms of technology are used, how they are
used, and by whom they are used
Small tile sets that compute while solving mazes
No full textWe ask the question of how small a self-assembling set of tiles can be yet have interesting
computational behaviour. We study this question in a model where supporting walls are
provided as an input structure for tiles to grow along: we call it the Maze-Walking Tile
Assembly Model. The model has a number of implementation prospects, one being DNA
strands that attach to a DNA origami substrate. Intuitively, the model suggests a separation
of signal routing and computation: the input structure (maze) supplies a routing diagram,
and the programmer’s tile set provides the computational ability. We ask how simple the
computational part can be.
We give two tiny tile sets that are computationally universal in the Maze-Walking
Tile Assembly Model. The first has four tiles and simulates Boolean circuits by directly
implementing NAND, NXOR and NOT gates. Our second tile set has 6 tiles and is called the
Collatz tile set as it produces patterns found in binary/ternary representations of iterations
of the Collatz function. Using computer search we find that the Collatz tile set is expressive
enough to encode Boolean circuits using blocks of these patterns. These two tile sets give
two different methods to find simple universal tile sets, and provide motivation for using
pre-assembled maze structures as circuit wiring diagrams in molecular self-assembly based
computing
Spatializing immigrant integration outcomes
No full textMeasurements of immigrant integration outcomes generally occur at the national
scale and, to a lesser extent, at the urban scale. This paper argues that immigrant
integration outcomes should be measured at other scales in order to better understand how the process of integration is affected by where people live. It uses existing
large-scale data sets for the Republic of Ireland to show differences in integration
outcomes, measured using the Zaragoza indicators, for three of the country's eight
NUTS 3 regions. The analysis shows that there are marked differences in immigrant
integration outcomes across regions and highlights the different regional barriers to
and enablers of integration. The paper concludes that geographers should advocate
for a more nuanced understanding of immigrant integration as a spatialized process
and should insist on the importance of making relevant data available at a range of
spatial scale