NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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The Integration of Adult Education into Community-Based Drug Rehabilitation: An exploration to achieve best outcomes for service users.
No full textThis thesis investigates the potential of adult educational theories to enhance recovery prospects and life quality for individuals engaged in community-based addiction services. It examines the integration of adult education into drug treatment programs and its role in the empowerment of service users. The research concentrates on opportunities for improved life chances, long-term recovery outcomes, and the practices and policies that can amplify these outcomes. An analysis of adult education's effectiveness within these programs illustrates how educational and rehabilitative processes are mutually supportive
Financial literacy practices on family farms.
No full textFinancial literacy has attracted significant interest in the past two decades with researchers predominantly
focusing on two dimensions of its conceptualisation; knowledge and application. This paper answers calls for
research on how context shapes financial literacy in Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) using a
practice framework drawn from established literacy theory. Financial literacy practices manifest in events and
are influenced and shaped by social, cultural, temporal, technological, historical and institutional circumstances.
This context-driven approach facilitates the examination of financial literacy in MSMEs where the owner-manager’s financial literacy is entwined with that of the enterprise’s practices. Using in-depth longitudinal case
studies, we show how social and financial literacy practices on family farms are intrinsically interlinked and
frame the timing of financial activities, the roles and tasks people undertake, the location where these activities
occur, and how they are articulated. Institutional power relationships manifest in the disconnect between farm
level financial literacy practices, many of which are informal and idiosyncratic, and those required by banks and
government agencies. This power divide leads to frustration and sometimes apparent indifference to conducting
more formal financial literacy practices. Temporality also emerges as a critical contextual factor. We identify the
important moments in the farming calendar when farmers are focused on the financial aspects of the farm and
propose that educational programmes aimed at improving the farmers’ financial literacy could be more effectively targeted using a social practice lens
Long-Term Evolution of Significant Wave Height in the EasternTropical Atlantic between 1940 and 2022 Using the ERA5 Dataset
No full textStudies on the variability in ocean wave climate provide engineers and policy makers with information to plan, develop, and control coastal and offshore activities. Ocean waves bear climatic imprints through which the global climate system can be better understood. Using the recently updated ERA5 dataset, this study evaluated the spatiotemporal distribution and variability in significant wave height (SWH) in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic (ETA). The short-term trends and rates of change were obtained using the Mann–Kendall trend test and the Theil–Sen slope estimator, respectively, and decadal trends were assessed using wavelet transformation. Significant, positive monthly and yearly trends and a prevailing decadal trend were observed across the domain. Observed trends suggest that stronger waves are getting closer to the coast and are modulated by the Southern and Northern Atlantic mid-latitude storm fields. These observations have implications for the increasing coastal erosion rates on the eastern coast of the Tropical Atlantic
‘Datafied dividuals and learnified potentials’: The coloniality of datafication in an era of learnification
No full textWidespread popular discourse, at the time of writing, is centring on the capabilities of AI technologies, among others, in utilising the readily available mass of data to augment claimed educational problems. These positions often elide the unobjective nature of algorithms and the socio-politically infused assemblages of data available, situated within the neoliberalist scientism dominating educational policy discourse. The simplicity with which datafication treats education has led to a global culture of data-driven techno-rationality that affords ultra-rapid forms of free-floating control settled on an ideology of dataism. Dataism rests on the assumption that sociality and subjectification can be reduced to quantifiable data whereby the student rather than being treated as a subject comes to be treated as data doppelganger. The injustices inherent in datafication and its associated epistemes ignore hidden neoliberal inequalities and maintain the insidious coloniality inherent in advanced capitalism, while simultaneously fuelling the rapid and cyclical stripping of purpose from education itself. There is a need to problematise the hidden logics of coloniality that are both maintained and reproduced within the datafication agenda. The current article draws on decolonial theory to animate the logics of datafication through a Deleuzian reading, situated within the learnification of neoliberal education
‘Bearing witness to negativity’: towards just futures of education
No full textContemporary educational discourse is filled with references to ‘the future’ and ‘the futures of education.’ In September 2024, the United Nations (UN) will host a Summit of the Future, billed as a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance’ (United Nations Citation2024, n.p.). This event is happening on the heels of a number of major education-focused futures-oriented initiatives, including the UN 2022 Transforming Education Summit (United Nations Citation2023), which took place at UN Headquarters in September 2022, the publication of a landmark UNESCO report on the futures of education in 2021 (ICFE Citation2021) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Future of Education and Skills 2030 project (OECD Citation2019). Whereas futures-thinking is not a novel feature of global educational governance, the scale and unprecedented nature of recent technological, political, and socio-ecological change has heightened the urgency for radical reimaginings of education. Numerous megatrends, crises and developments – including the evolution of artificial intelligence and digital technologies, the acceleration of the climate crisis, the growth of authoritarian populism and civil unrest, the outbreak or intensification of war in many parts of the world and the mass displacement of people – are having a profound effect on education systems at local, national and global levels
Advancing an Embodied Understanding of Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities
No full textThe UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) includes accessibility among its general principles and articulates it in Article 9. Further, accessibility obligations are included in several other provisions of the Convention. In that regard, the CRPD recognizes the significance of accessibility as an enabling factor, and as a precondition for persons with disabilities to participate fully in society. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, and on foot of arts-based research in the form of inclusive dance, this article aims to re-construe the inherent dimensions of accessibility as a normative concept. It puts forward an ‘embodied understanding’ of accessibility with a view of advancing existing legal analysis and adding to traditional cognitive ways of knowing. On the whole, this article identifies three inherent and intertwined facets of such embodied understanding of accessibility—namely, respect for difference, collaboration and care, and layered complexity. It argues that this embodied understanding may help achieving the overall paradigm shift of the CRPD
Recognizing professional development of mathematics and statistics learning support staff
No full textTutors play an important role in effective Mathematics Learning Support, and ensuring good initial training and development is key. Typically, in the UK and Ireland, tutors do not gain any formal recognition for the training they receive. This paper details a four competences model of training for tutors and presents the analysis of feedback from 11 tutors and two staff involved in piloting the model at two institutions. The model, which is informed by professional development guidelines, consultation across the mathematical sciences community, and enabled by a national Mathematics Learning Support Network, provides immediate recognition of the professional development undertaken and is amenable to formal accreditation. A structure of four digital badges is used to assign immediate value to the training and development of tutors. To add further value for tutors, a capstone tutor badge has been established for those completing all four competences. Thematic analysis of feedback from the piloting of the model identifies three overarching themes: the importance of community, developing as a professional, and motivating and enabling professional development. Although primarily of interest to those involved in Mathematics Learning Support, the innovative structure of the model and the insights gained from its piloting are such that it offers potential for genuine transferability across other subject disciplines
Is there a nationality wage premium in European football?
No full textWe investigate the presence of nationality salary premia in two top European football leagues (the Premier League
and Serie A). We uncover a substantial pay premium for South American players (primarily driven by Argentina
and Brazil) of between 11 and 15 per cent in magnitude. We investigate possible mechanisms, such as whether
these salary effects are driven by new entrants to the league, and whether they are reflected in team attendances
and team performance. Fans appear to respond to higher proportions of South American players in England, but
not in Italy. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest why potential differences might exist across
the leagues
‘A Joycean Smutmonger’: Echoes of Joyce in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Rural Modernism
No full textSince its publication, critics of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Irish-language masterpiece Cré na Cille (1949; Graveyard Clay) have consistently namechecked James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), usually for the sole purpose of conveying its perceived difficulty and/or vulgarity. Indeed, Cré na Cille was first refused publication because, in Ó Cadhain’s words, it was too long and too ‘Joycean’. Ó Cadhain himself evidently saw his work as existing in dialogue with his renowned progenitor and during a late lecture revelled in retelling an overheard conversation in which he was described as nothing more than a ‘Joycean smutmonger’. This article goes beyond such surface-level comparisons to unpick how Ó Cadhain proffers a radical portrayal of rural Irish modernity to compare with Joyce’s predominantly urban equivalent. It argues that Ó Cadhain’s characters, like those found in Joyce’s oeuvre, are consistently forced to navigate the forces of tradition and modernity, which existed at the heart of rural Irish society in the mid-twentieth century. This essay will first compare how Ó Cadhain and Joyce treat the predicaments of a young woman preparing for emigration in their respective short stories ‘An Bhliain 1912’ and ‘Eveline’, before moving on to treat Ó Cadhain’s experiments in form and language in Cré na Cille. In particular, it will examine such experimentation in the context of his lasting obsession with Finnegans Wake (1939), as evidenced by his stated belief that he ‘could write a work like Finnegans Wake’. Informed by recent developments in ‘alternative modernities’, this essay attempts to offer a nascent definition of what might be signified by ‘rural modernism’ in an Irish context
Lexicon Leponticum – concept and implementation. Cisalpine Celtic literacy. Proceedings of the international symposium Maynooth 23–24 June 2022
No full textThe digital edition and etymological dictionary of Cisalpine Celtic, Lexicon Leponticum (LexLep), has now been online for thirteen years. I want
to take this opportunity to take stock of what has been achieved so far,
present the status of the site as of 2023, and cast a look into its futur