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The College was successful in gaining research funding, along with five other EU partners, as a result of a joint proposal made to the Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency’s (EACEA) Lifelong Learning Programme at the beginning of 2011. The project is being managed by Kieran McGeown in collaboration with Martin Hagan and the Research Office, and involves other organisations from the world of science communication, higher education, research and development, research networks, and post-primary education. The countries involved are Germany, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The project aims to determine the perceptions of young European pupils, from schools involved in the project, towards learning about science and technology at school in terms of motivation, interest, enjoyment, activities, career prospects, etc. Following on from this, the project will devise a series of science and technology competency guidelines on pedagogy and learning, and bidirectional collaboration between schools and research & development centres. The guidelines will then be piloted within the project’s schools to determine their appropriateness as examples of best practice. For further details, please contact Kieran McGeown. The project's website address is: www.stimula-project.eu and a leaflet outlining a summary of the project is available to download.
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This project received funding from SCoTENS and is a joint research project between Dr Tracey Connelly, University College Cork and Dr Geraldine Magennis, St Mary's University College Belfast. The aims of their project are to: explore the nature and conduct of school-based work assessments within a sample of primary and post-primary initial teacher education degree courses drawn from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; investigate the links between various school-based assessment techniques and subsequent planning, teaching and learning at degree and post-graduate diploma level; examine the extent to which these various methods of assessment of the school-based work element are found to be satisfactory in the opinions of a selection of stake-holders and end-users; and situate and critically discuss the findings with reference to current thinking, including formative assessment. For further details, please contact Geraldine Magennis.
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This project received funding from SCoTENS and is a joint research project between Professor Peadar Cremin, Mary Immaculate College Limerick and Professor Peter Finn, St Mary's University College Belfast. The aims of their project are to: initiate a critical review of North/South teacher education partnerships involving Irish and African institutions to assess the contribution of the principles and practice of the partnership model; identify and itemise the key issues to be addressed within sustainable, mutually beneficial teacher education partnerships; organise a conference of Irish and international experts to assess educational partnerships and to consider how future planning and policy decisions nationally and internationally may be improved; and produce an edited book of papers to disseminate the lessons learnt and inform future collaborative projects in development contexts. For further details, please contact Peter Finn. |
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This project, which received funding from The Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation, aims to apply the outcomes of a previous project called “The Leonardo Effect” focusing on the primary school setting to the post-primary key stage 3 setting in an attempt to make an impact on the UK education system. During the progression of the project the planned outcomes include: adopting an interdisciplinary learning approach to benefit pupils’ learning in art and science and the development of their subject knowledge and ideas; producing increasingly committed and confident pupils of all abilities, who find their learning experiences more relevant and interesting, and who demonstrate curiosity about science questions; helping teachers to recognise the value of creativity and appreciate that learners can make significant contributions to the organisation of their own learning; and creating a lasting legacy of reorganisation of teaching methods, facilitating genuine integration and flexibility of subject learning in the schools. The project will evaluate the response of pupils to this interdisciplinary learning approach using the professional judgement of their teachers. Progression in subject knowledge will not be assessed in any formal test as this would be likely to inhibit teachers from embracing the full approach. Evaluation will be carried out through questionnaires at the end of the project and informally through discussions and reading of the teachers’ journals. The questionnaires will focus on: pupil engagement, particularly in relation to pupils of all abilities; acquisition of subject knowledge; and development of literacy, transferrable skills, approach to homework and interaction with home. In addition, focus group interviews will be conducted with the classes to obtain their opinions directly. Pupils will be asked to compare this approach with their experience of single subject teaching. The project will evaluate the responses of teachers through analysing their journals where they record issues, challenges and successes related to planning flexibly, teaching creatively, working across subjects, team teaching, timetabling etc. The effects of the work on school organisation and legacy will be obtained from head teachers through interviews and questionnaires. An expectation is to see interaction and collaboration between the researchers, schools and LEAs in the sharing of knowledge from this work, which LEAs will continue to promote after the completion of the pilot. LEA advisors will be informed of the pilot in advance and encouraged to play a significant role. They will attend the training and be surveyed via questionnaires at the end of pilot. At the level of national development in curricular support, findings will be directed formally through published reports and informally through established contacts to the inspectorates and individual curricular organisations, where we already have established working relationships. The intention being to influence policy, contribute to debate and propose development at key stages 3 & 4. Evaluation of the impact of this on changing policy is difficult to assess in the short term, but the external evaluator will look at this in addition to the areas mentioned above. These aims will be achieved by introducing a programme of learning in six large secondary schools drawn from each region of the UK, involving an entire year group of students between the ages of 11-14, and their teachers of art and science. The programme comprising three stages will last approximately 8 weeks and topics will be selected for study by pupils in association with their teachers. Pupils will be encouraged to explore contemporary issues relevant to art and science and to consider examples of ‘sciart’. Pupils will be encouraged to scan the media for topics of interest. For further details, please contact Deirdre Robson or Ivor Hickey. |
The
College is involved in a project lead by the Education Subject
Centre advancing learning and teaching in education (ESCalate)
in collaboration with the University of Bristol, London South
Bank University, Bangor University, Institute of Education, and
the University of Strathclyde. The project received funding from
the Higher Education Academy and the Joint Information Systems
Committee. The project aims to create a collection of open education
resources for education practitioners to integrate education for
sustainable development into their programmes and to promote this
collection to ensure its use and sustained development. The objectives
are: to discover, review and revise (as appropriate) digital resources
from a range of subjects within the overarching discipline of
Education that focus on Education for Sustainable Development
and to share them as open content; to provide a trusted, sustainable
community repository for these resources. In addition to the dedicated
ESD repository, resources will also be submitted to JorumOpen,
Slideshare and YouTube as appropriate; to bring about a community
of peers committed to sharing and reviewing online resources from
a range of subject areas within Education; and to set in motion
a culture of shared, open educational resources across the Education
community developing an increased awareness of and commitment
to sharing teaching resources. For further details, please contact
Gerard
McCann. |
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There are eight partner
institutions involved in this project, which includes: the University
of Education Freiburg; the University of Ljubljana; the University
of the Aegean; the University of Lyon; the Pedagogical University
Krakow; the European University Cyprus; the Malardalen University;
and off course St Mary's University College Belfast. The project,
known as “PAM-INA”, received funding from Comenius,
under the framework of the European Union’s Lifelong Learning
Programme and one aspect of it, which takes place in the College,
involves research with partner schools using quantitative and
qualitative surveys. There will be an examination and comparison
of the curricula of the participating countries concerning “Europe“.
The gathered data will show whether there is a connection between
actual teaching of European issues in the classroom and syllabi
goals. Based on the research results a Multilingual Tool Kit will
be developed to help students to learn more about daily life in
Europe. The key objective behind the toolkit is to help students
develop critical inter-cultural understanding as a step towards
more active European citizenship. The toolkit will consist of
a workbook for students, a manual for teachers including lesson
plans for various themes with learning objectives, teaching strategies/
approaches and methods, two interactive DVD resources, an e- based
communication platform to encourage dialogue between participating
students. At the end of the Tool Kit Unit pupils will produce
a short DVD to communicate their understanding of European identity.
The project will also manage a web-site which is intended to serve
as an e-management centre for the project but also a collaborative
forum for inter-cultural exchange on European identity. For further
details, please contact either Tracey
McKay or Angela
Vaupel. |
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Achieving consistency in the supervision of student teachers by a range of tutors who come to teaching practice with a variety of backgrounds and agendas, is a challenging issue for those of us who organise and co-ordinate this essential aspect of the B.Ed. degree. This project, which received funding from SCoTENS in March 2010, aims to consider a number of important aspects of supervision and to develop an outline programme of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for any party involved in the supervision of student teachers in schools. A series of cross-border exchanges will seek to explore the following questions: What expectations are supervisors bringing to the supervision of students? How do we set standard expectations? What means have we for developing a more coherent, consistent approach? Can we develop a programme of CPD in this area? For further details, please contact Claire Connolly. |
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