My guest in this episode is Mr. Alex Murphy. Alex is a Newly Qualified Teacher and a graduate of the Professional Master of Education (PME) initial teacher education (ITE) programme in the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin Alex has been teaching as a newly qualified teacher in his Induction Year in an Educate Together post-primary school in Dublin. His PME research was supervised by Dr. Erika Piazzoli and focused on an examination of the role of the body in a second language classroom. Alex has published his ITE research work recently in the Student Teacher Educational Research (STER) peer reviewed e-journal.

In this episode we discuss the transition from being a student teacher to becoming a newly qualified teacher and how what student teachers learn in their teacher preparation programmes is relevant and does reveal itself in even greater detail as a newly qualified teacher. He mentions that the transition from the initial teacher education phase to the induction phase is welcome and something that student teachers look forward to but that that it can be an abrupt transition. Alex says that “you're not going to be the student teacher forever. And eventually, you are going to be the teacher that gets to see these, these social, sociological theories come to life in the classroom”. He advises “that there isn’t any middle ground between being a student [and] becoming a teacher for PME students” and, that” the transition happens almost kind of overnight, as you move from pretty minimal responsibility to do a full contract in a matter of months, you know, in April, May, you're finishing off your thesis and then when it hits August, September, you’re responsible for full classes, so the jump is quite big”. He also mentions how when student-teachers complete their initial teacher education, that “you realise the kind of wealth of knowledge and experience it's actually out there in the field”.

Alex describes how when he started as a newly qualified teacher that there were a lot of new staff, including newly qualified teachers in his school who all started at the same time. He says that he had wonderful in-school support during the pandemic when all other supports were online. He says that “just being able to go to someone and say, do you have any idea what's going on?Because I'm not entirely sure, either. And having that reassurance that everyone struggles in the beginning, but we got there, you know, we’ve made it through the year”.

Alex identifies a number of significant changes from his role as a student teacher to his role as a newly qualified teacher and “how you're no longer in the space that appears to supervise the class, but you're very much a member of staff and have a responsibility within the school”. This has been challenging for him and other newly qualified teachers but that he really enjoys “the independence that comes with this, and the freedom to teach the way you want to teach”. He reminds PME students that “you will eventually get to decide how you want to do things in your classroom. So we can be collaborative, but it should be on a teacher's terms as to how much they want to collaborate and how much collaboration they're comfortable with, because everyone has their own way of doing things”. He talks about teacher autonomy and how having the final say in what happens in his lessons is really important and “that sense of autonomy boosts your

self-confidence and allows you to make assured and informed decision” and you know that by the end of your Induction year, that “you're able to stand on your own two feet, and you're able to stand over decisions that you've made”.

We discuss a number of different Sociology of Education concepts including; teacher identity and NQTs forming a teacher identity, the family and the school, school culture, family culture, cultural capital, curriculum, language and the pedagogy of teaching a language, additional curricular activities in school and much more. Alex reflects on his own family cultural capital and how that influenced his progression in education and how education was valued in his home. He realises that not all students are fortunate to have the support that he had and that there are multiple priorities for families overall and sometimes school and engagement in education is not one of those priorities. He comments how “it’s not the education system’s job to impose certain priorities on families”, but instead it is “our job is to help these students through the system as best as we can, and help them to achieve success in whatever way they can in our lessons in our subjects, whatever it might be, and their schooling, too..”

He concludes by discussing the “usefulness of the Sociology of Education modules” and “how they really become clear when you're actually in the classroom yourself. And when you're the teacher that is solely responsible for a group… I think it's then that you see they're useful in the sense that, you know, they allow you to the scope to kind of focus on the needs of everyone, and then that can be hard to challenge at times”. He says that that sociology modules tell us is that “there's a lot more going on outside of the classroom than we could ever realise. So you have to consider what happens outside of the space that allows it to be that way”.

This is a great episode for student teachers, teacher educators, newly qualified teachers, parents, policy makers, school management and teachers. This interview with Alex is a very honest, enjoyable, encouraging and reassuring account as he recalls how his engagement with the Sociology of Education modules as a student teacher and now the newly qualified teacher has been “hugely beneficial, just for perspective, taking, I think, more than anything else, and for developing empathy towards everyone that's involved”.

Tune in to hear more!

My guest in this episode is Dr. Aimie Brennan. Aimie is a lecturer in Education Policy and Practice and a Teacher Educator in Marino Institute of Education where she teaches Research Methods and also teaches on the Education Studies programme and the BEd programme. Prior to working in Marino Institute of Education, Aimie spent five years teaching in Mary Immaculate College and has taught Sociology to early childhood education, primary, post-primary and Master’s students. Aimie has a PhD in Sociology from University College Cork, which is where she started teaching and tutoring in the Department of Sociology and Philosophy. Aimie is the convenor of the pedagogy of sociology and professional practice study group in the Sociological Association of Ireland (SAI) and is founder and coordinator of the STER project http://www.ster.ie/ The Student Teacher Educational Research (STER) project includes a student peer-reviewed eJournal, a Conference and a podcast. 

In this episode we discuss challenges for teacher educators when teaching Sociology of Education in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses. Aimie’s interest in the challenges for teacher educators teaching Sociology of Education stems from her own interest in the position of sociology and teacher education and changes that have happened throughout the history of Teacher Education, she mentions how there have been several reform periods over time, through the twenties, thirties, sixties and seventies and how sociology has always been a core part of teacher education. She mentions how the position of sociology in policy and curriculum is not necessarily always reflected in practice and how she sometimes finds herself teaching sociology that student teachers sometimes struggle to engage with for very legitimate reasons. We discuss the value of sociology and sociological theory for student teachers at primary education level and also how we might use a sociological lens to consider what the challenges are for teaching sociology and looking at some of those influences. We focus on the kind of rationalisation and the homogeneity of the group that we are teaching as the kind of challenges that face us as teacher educators.

As a Teacher Educator Aimie says that her own thinking has probably changed over time and while working in teacher education that she doesn’t actually think as a Sociologist that she can actually fully prepare students to understand all of the complex concepts that exist in the classroom, not with the kind of time that's allocated to sociology, at a sufficiently deep level, but she tries to ensure that students have a nuanced understanding and appreciation of values in different contexts. She says she concentrates on two things (which seem to be the two things that occur all the time when she is talking about sociology, or when she is talking about policy because they overlap). So rather than taking a kind of a thematic approach, which Aimie believes happens a lot in sociology, “where it tends to be, where we’re talking about gender, or we’re talking about class, or we are talking about family or community”... she tends to teach around two things. “So the first thing is encouraging students to see reality as constructors. So social constructionism, on how that underpins everything”. And the second thing, “understanding their own biography, and how that can actually develop more empathy and more understanding of the influence of structure and agency”. She says how one of the important things that students can do is to really spend time and energy unpacking their own biography and unpacking their performance, because all facets of sociology, whether it's class, or gender, or bias, or capital or prejudice, or socialisation are all ingrained in our identity and our performance.

Aimie talks about shedding a little bit more light on how we as individuals and as teachers have responsibility for reinforcing and unpacking inequality, and “how we're actually all influenced by power and norms. So for example, like Foucault talks about power, not as one person having a monopoly over somebody else. But as a gaze, you know, a common standard that we all internalise”. She says how student-teachers can kind of appreciate “that actually, we all contribute to fostering conformity on some level. And by that we do that by responding to behaviour of children in the classroom or by reacting in a certain way”. She goes on to describe how it is important that student-teachers understand “that control over what's normal or abnormal, is not located out there in some, you know, powerful individuals or powerful institutions, but actually, it's located in ourselves, then that turns the spotlight inwards. And we have to ask ourselves, you know, how do we behave? What should we understand our role to be? What stigmas do we experience, personally? And how does that influence how we respond to things that happen in the classroom?”

We briefly discuss student teachers as reflective practitioners and how challenging it is for student teachers to get time to actually engage critically with sociological theories and to reflect on those theories and make connections in practice when their ITE programmes are so busy and so packed with required modules. Aimie mentions one of her research projects on which she worked with Dr. Angela Canny in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick focusing on students’ engagement with the sociology of education, particularly looking at their experience of it over time, and how relevant they feel it is to their practice and the challenges that they experience. Some student feedback indicates that they don't see the relevance of some of those sociological concepts because they don't directly affect them and there is also evidence of where they do consider sociology useful for addressing different things in practice things like equality and fairness and they do find it useful for increasing tolerance for diversity, and trying to work a little bit more with families and partnership with parents.

Tune in and hear much more from Aimie about challenges for Teacher Educators within the Sociology of Education modules in this episode. 

My guest in this episode is Dr. Maria Campbell. Maria is a lecturer and teacher educator in the School of Education in St. Angela’s College in Sligo http://www.stangelas.nuigalway.ie/ where she teaches Sociology of Education (and other modules) and is Director of Graduate programmes. She is also the Southern co-chair of SCoTENS 2019-2022 and is a member of the Ubuntu Assembly (embedding Development Education in 2nd level Initial Teacher Education). Maria is a former primary school teacher and principal. As a newly qualified teacher Maria spent her summers travelling to India, South America, Africa and many other countries where she did some voluntary work over the years, going beyond the tourist holiday, taking the opportunity to live with and work with people in different countries. Maria believes that this opened up for her the notion of ‘differences’, different perspectives, different geographical backgrounds, different cultures, etc. Living and working with people in different countries, thinking in different ways fascinated Maria and informed her thinking and forced her to question herself about what she didn't know as she tried to understand why people thought in different ways, why they acted in different ways, what caused them to think differently and how that impacted on her and her role as a teacher.

In this episode we discuss positioning and positionality and how this influences our perspectives. Maria describes the concept of positionality in relation to her place of work, and her life practices, and in relation to norms and practices in communities and looking at the bigger picture and overall context. She uses the example of children all going to school (a norm in many communities) and how it came to be the fact that all children go to school? She asks if that was a bottom up idea or did we all come together in a small community and say this is a great idea, or was it a top-down idea or an imposed approach? She talks about how we might agree and go along with the norm or how we can go the opposite route and challenge the norm if we don’t agree with it. Maria asks the question if practices, norms and structures impact on children’s privilege, advantaging some and disadvantaging others. She uses these example to explain how in Sociology of Education in an Initial Teacher Education context we rationalise depending on our positioning and where we locate ourselves in the overall context.

We discuss the concepts of ‘othering’, ‘identity’, ‘equality and equity’, ‘agency’ and ‘power’. concepts Maria describes as being underpinned by social justice. We also discuss ‘deficit’ and charity and how the circle of privilege often shields us, in that whatever we see, what we do, whoever we are, as “the way to go”. And for those who do not fit into ‘our’ mould or modus operandi (whether we are coming from a good place, potentially, or perceived),  are in need of charity and are seen as being a deficit, because “they're not as good as you are and not like you”. We discuss cultural mediation, what culture is, cultural norms, culture and traditions, sets of norms, be it in our homes, in families and how different families can be have totally different cultural norms. We discuss the sociological theories of Nussbaum and emotions, Bourdieu and habitus and Bernstein and how these theorists all manifest in Initial Teacher Education Sociology of Education.

Maria also discusses SCoTENS (The Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South) https://scotens.org/  which is a network set up in 2003 as part of the broader peace dynamic that was gathering momentum on the island of Ireland at the time to create a safe space for teacher educators  in Ireland North and South to come together and discuss issues of common interest, and explore ways of co-operating closely together. SCoTENS has always been rooted in the deepest commitment to quality teaching and learning for all and Maria is currently the Southern co-chair and a member of the steering committee. 

Maria describes her experiences both as a teacher and a principal and her extensive research past and present including a research project with Home Economics teachers collaborating with  the University of Helsinki, another project on teacher agency with colleagues in Stranmillis, a student-teacher based project focusing on technology and online platforms with her colleague Dr. Deirdre Harvey and a Sociology project with Dr. Niamh Hourigan from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick; The TEACH Report (Traveller Education and Adults: Crisis, Challenge and Change)  which mapped challenges faced by young Mincéirs (Irish Travellers) in dealing with adult transitions in the Irish education system.

We also talk about the impact of Covid on us as teacher educators and on student teachers, using technology, break-out rooms, collaboration, broadband access, equities and inequities for students, isolation, student honesty and openness during lectures and tutorials and much more.

Tune in to hear much more in a very enjoyable, thought provoking and motivational contribution from Dr. Maria Campbell.

My guests in this episode are Dr. Rory McDaid and Dr. Garret Campbell from Marino Institute of Education. Dr. Campbell is the project manager for the Migrant Teacher project https://twitter.com/MTPteacher in Marino Institute of Education and he is also the chief executive of Global Schoolroom. Dr. McDaid is the Migrant Teacher project coordinator and he is a senior lecturer in Sociology of Education in Marino Institute of Education where he is also Head of Policy and Practice.

In this episode we discuss The Migrant Teacher project. The Migrant Teacher project supports immigrant internationally educated teachers to enter the teaching workforce in Ireland. The Migrant Teacher Project was established by Marino Institute of Education and is co-funded by the Department of Justice and Equality and the Department of Education and Skills. The project provides information, advice and training to migrant teachers who have qualified outside of Ireland, to help them to continue their profession in publicly funded schools in Ireland. The Project also provides a Bridging Programme to further enhance migrant teachers' professional development and opportunities for securing employment. The project has developed a network of schools who are interested in working as mentor teachers with migrant teachers all of whom are qualified teachers who have spent considerable time in the classroom with some of them are coming from leadership positions and many of them with huge levels of experience within the education system.

Garret discusses the research they are currently undertaking to understand the experiences of migrant teachers and their efforts to provide potential solutions to some of the problems for migrant teachers or present potential changes for migrant teachers within the system. He identifies three main challenges which he believes the migrant teacher faces in the system. The first challenge is securing teacher registration status in Ireland. He comments on how these teachers are amply qualified and have significant experience working in their own context but that it can be very stressful and very challenging for migrant teachers to secure registration here. The second challenge he identifies is recruitment and how the Migrant Teacher project advise migrant teachers to get involved with an Irish school in either an observation capacity in a volunteer capacity, because they will straightaway begin making connections with school principals, or deputy principals and other teachers, and they will be able to get a reference from an Irish context, rather than a reference from another jurisdiction. The third challenge identified is progression through and within the education system. 

Garret acknowledges that while Irish society has changed very dramatically in terms of demography, demographics and ethnicity what we see within the teaching profession remains largely homogenous and that while we know that diversity and inclusion benefits us all that this is not being fully translated into the teaching profession.

We discuss how migration takes place in all kinds of ways for all kinds of different reasons as well. They discuss how a lot of people on the Migrant Teacher Project have chosen to come to live in Ireland and how in Ireland there is a very strong history of Irish teachers migrating for three, four or five years to work elsewhere, and then return to Ireland, meaning it is not a unidirectional flow of teachers into Ireland only.

Rory mentions how in Ireland that there is a strict primary-post-primary division while in other jurisdictions there is a blended approach where there is a middle school where teachers can teach across from primary to post-primary or language teachers who will teach language from early primary to upper post primary but that when migrant teachers come to Ireland  from other jurisdictions that it is challenging for them ‘to fit’ to the Irish model. 

They recount how some of the migrant teachers who have been very successful in their own countries can't even get into an entry level position in Ireland and that this impacts on their identity as a teacher. Both Rory and Garret refer to how after migrant teachers move to Ireland, they often feel like they are no longer a teacher or are ‘teachers in transition’ which is very challenging and damaging to their professional identity. 

Yet another thought provoking episode that will be of interest to teachers, student teachers, parents, school management, management bodies, policy makers, communities and educators in general. Tune in to hear more!

My guests in this episode are Dr. Gavin Murphy, Dr. Declan Fahie and Bella

Fitzpatrick.

Dr. Gavin Murphy is an Assistant Professor in Education in the School of Education

in Trinity College Dublin. As a post primary school teacher Gavin worked as a

languages teacher. He was introduced to Sociology of Education both during his

initial teacher education and before that, while studying languages, when he studied

sociolinguistics. This sensitised him to the idea of questioning ‘taken for granted

assumptions’. He mentions Mills, who invites us in our sociological imagination to

make the familiar strange and how as an Irish teacher, that kind of minority

perspective he had about making the familiar strange was in relation to language first

and foremost. Gavin’s main area of research interest and work in his current role

focuses on educational policy and leadership.

Dr. Declan Fahie is a former primary school teacher, he has taught in West Dublin,

the UK and in Sicily and he is currently Director of School Placement and Director of

Research in UCD. Declan was a teacher for almost 20 years working in primary

schools and mostly in West Dublin. He spent a lot of his teaching career teaching

Junior infants. He mentions how four and five year olds were his audience for many,

many years in a job that he absolutely loved. Declan has taught Sociology of

Education, to PME student teachers, at both primary and post-primary level. His

Master's thesis was on the experiences of lesbian and gay teachers.

Bella Fitzpatrick worked initially as a volunteer at Shout Out (www.shoutout.ie) for

seven years and became its first ever employee in 2017 and is now CEO of the

organisation and an LGBTQ+ educator. Bella believes that sociology includes the

study of society, human social behaviours, patterns of social relationships, social

interaction. Bella describes constantly trying to get people to be a bit more fluid in

their thinking about things they think are just set in stone and think more broadly and

more inclusion overall.

In this episode we discuss LGBTQI+ issues in Education for teachers, students and

school communities from a number of different perspectives including; social justice,

equity, inclusion, equality of opportunity, representation in the teaching profession of

and for LGBTQI+ teachers and contemporary, practical LGBTQI+ student issues and

challenges. My guests articulate a broad variety of views on inclusion and diversity

within the teaching profession. We explore key challenges and barriers, such as

progression, for LGBTQI+ teachers within the profession. We also look at

opportunities for LGBTQI+ teachers, the visibility and inclusion of the diverse

LGBTQI+ community within our education system, the opportunities for all teachers

and school leaders to be allies to the LGBTQI+ members of the school community,

and the impact of Covid on the LGBTQI+ community over the past 15 months.

This is a really informative, interesting and engaging episode from three really

inspiring contributors. Some of the stand out points for me from this podcast episode, include how the concepts of empathy, tolerance, acceptance, belonging, compassion and care are so critical in working together to address LGBTQI+ issues in education.

Gavin describes his first research engagement with the whole question of

educational leadership research, policy (specifically, the National LGBTI Youth

Strategy) and LGBTQ+ questions, which was the interconnection between our own

researcher subjectivity and educational leadership research and why when we talk

about leading, there was this glaring absence compared to all of the other topics of

social justice. There was much research in leadership and policy fields where there

was economic challenge and ethnically diverse communities, and he questioned why

wasn’t there more to talk about leading in respect to gender and sexual diversity and

expression. He also articulates a Sustainable Development Goals point of view and

how there are very clear connections to the work of a sustainable educational

provision and ensuring that for example, some challenges that LGBTQ+ children

face, for example when they don't have a positive coming out experience and how

this can impact on their well-being and mental health.

Gavin and Declan talk about their free online resource www.queerying.ie where they

discuss and present many LGBTQI+ issues with contributions from other scholars, in

the area of research on queer issues in education, as well as contributions from

teachers and some of the advocacy groups. They both comment on how things have

improved so much in terms of how schools address and support Lesbian and Gay

pupils but that one of the challenges that remains is the issue of how schools

negotiate trans issues and that members of the trans community feel very

vulnerable. Declan describes how it is very difficult for members of the trans

community who are experiencing any level of discomfort, comfort, challenge, or

distress around their own presentation of their own gender, or their gender identity.

He says that there are huge opportunities for schools to educate themselves in these

issues and that it is the responsibility of school communities to educate themselves

to support members of the trans community. He says that this is a space that is

under attack at the moment and how we should be very mindful of that and how the

LGBTQI+ community are a community, who can support one another.

Bella describes how Shout Out have been giving LGBTQ+ inclusion workshops to

students for the past nine years and that this is their core work. In the past nine

years, they have delivered almost 2000 workshops to tens of thousands of people.

Shout Out visit schools pretty much every single day and during COVID, they moved

online. Bella says that they speak to all students, not only LGBTQ+ students, and

that they focus on empathy building and thinking of empathy as a skill set with all

students that they meet. In their work they encourage students to realise that we all

have a relationship to our sexual orientation and to our gender identity, it just might

not be something that we have had to think about a huge amount, because those in

the majority don't think about it a lot. One of the main aspects that Shout Out focus on with students is that whatever is important to them about their identity, whether that is being from Cork, or supporting Dublin, or being really into theatre, that that is as important as our identities. LGBTQ+ equality helps everyone because it is about thinking past more simplistic, binarized ideas of gender and sexual expression.

Gavin also refers to how as educators, we are working as individuals to serve

children, young people, primarily, however, that the whole collective effort of doing

that traverses working with colleagues in an organisation serving an educational

purpose. He says that it is really important to think of staff, and the team who work

together, how they feel connected to, for example, the educational ethos, mission

values, etc. He mentions also how it's important in a community construction of

schooling to think about, perhaps children who are attending a school who identify as straight, but who have same sex parents and how sometimes ‘families can be

forgotten’. He gives the example of how we think about the kinds of admissions

forms that we have in schools, our parents, teachers, and even representations of

who are part of our school communities. These ‘artefacts’ in an organisation may not

be LGBTQI+ inclusive, albeit unintentionally, and ought to be on our radars.

Key to the overall discussion is the concept of intersectionality. Intersectionality is

about different layers of potential discrimination and it helps us to conceive of,

analyse and understand more deeply the complex (and often personal, identity-

related) nature of inequity. Contributors discuss how our identities are multiple and

that ‘we're not just one thing but are instead lots of different things’. Intersectionality,

originally connected to scholars of US Black feminism, is when we look at the

experience of somebody, particularly somebody who was othered and we say that

they're actually othered at multiple levels. Declan mentions how when you're

discriminated against or treated badly at multiple levels, it's much more difficult to

resist or fight back, because it's like as if you're ‘doomed’. Understanding the

sociological significance of ‘othering’ and ‘intersectionality’ is critical for educators to

approach LGBTQI+ issues in education, as well as to conceive of the rationale for

the prospects collective action through allyship offers not only the LGBTQI+

community, but the entire community as a whole for generations to come.

Tune in to hear more! A very important episode for teachers, students, school

management, parents, teacher educators, policy makers and many more.

My guest in this episode is Professor Aileen Kennedy. Professor Kennedy is Professor of Practice in Teacher Education and Director of Teacher Education in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. She graduated as a primary teacher and having taught for six years in Clydebank moved on to become the first ever Professional Officer at the General teaching Council of Scotland. From there she took up a lecturing post at Strathclyde and after 15 years moved to the University of Edinburgh where she spent 5 years developing a radical new Initial Teacher Education programme that qualifies graduates to teach across the primary/secondary transition, working in an explicitly activist way to progress social justice in schools and their communities. In 2020 she returned to Strathclyde to take up a position as Professor of Practice in Teacher Education. Professor Kennedy is currently the Director of Teacher Education in the School of Education in Strathclyde, working with colleagues and wider stakeholders to enhance and promote work in teacher education policy and pedagogy. Professor Kennedy is informed in her work by an activist approach which puts social justice and transformative learning front and centre. She believes that Sociology of Education found her rather than her finding it and that she had a somewhat unintentional journey into it. I spoke to her about her career, her work and research, her interest in and commitment to equity, fairness, social justice and much more within Initial Teacher Education.

We talk about the Scottish Initial Teacher Education system and the similarities and differences with the Irish system, how ITE in Scotland has developed and progressed over time. She describes how innovative routes of ITE in Scotland address various challenges in the system including recruitment challenges around particular geographical areas, challenges of recruitment in particular subjects, underrepresentation of certain groups in teaching at both concurrent and consecutive levels and the challenge of attracting applicants back into teaching. Professor Kennedy elaborates on her episode title and explains that in her view that while ITE programmes promote and are based on a view of social justice that underpins ITE provision that this is something that has evolved over time through a process from an initial aspiration to enactment. She is keen to explore how social justice is enacted and how we see it in ITE programmes and that ITE students not only see how we teach through a social justice lens but also how students learn through a social justice lens. She talks about social justice as a way of being as well as a set of knowledge and pedagogical approaches, something that is an all- encompassing embodied approach.

We discuss what the research tells us about social justice in ITE and how that might impact on students’ outcomes. She refers to how politically the disadvantage of certain groups is prioritised at different times in ITE and in the Scottish case that there have been focused efforts to address poverty and attempts to close the poverty related attainment gap supported by research that tells us which groups of young people are less likely to achieve at school and how best to mitigate and organise and deliver teaching.

Professor Kennedy talks about critical pedagogy, transformative learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, professional activism as areas of research she is interested in and draws on in her work with ITE and in her research. We discuss the challenges of conceptualising and delivering the ITE curriculum cognisant of the learning outcomes requirements, time constraints and other mandated priorities. She describes how she led the development of an innovative new Masters-level initial teacher education (ITE) programme whilst at the University of Edinburgh. This programme adopted an explicit activist approach which put social justice and transformative learning frontand centre. She recalls how her students were supported to co-create their learning experience with teacher educators and her learning about assessment in general and we discuss the perennial issue of the purpose of assessment as simply giving a grade or classification or assessment for genuine learning.

We veer off course a little and talk about the ‘doing’ of research that supports our practice as teacher educators generally and more specifically research that supports ITE provision and reconceptualization. Professor Kennedy discusses the concept of ‘assessment’ of student teachers which is a contested and challenging space and the different approaches to this. We discuss the practicalities of school placement, the role of various stakeholders including mentor teachers in the assessment of student teachers as part of a tri-partite agreement.

In a message to student teachers she reminds us that the enactment of social justice can’t ever be something that teacher educators just deliver and that student teachers should feel entitled to be part of the enactment of social justice and to have conversations with all stakeholders and contribute to the enactment as they have more power at their disposal as student teachers than maybe they think and enactment is only ever something that is driven by a whole community.

This is a must listen episode for teacher educators, student teachers, policy makers, school management, teachers and parents. As Irish teacher educators embark on the process of reconceptualising initial teacher education programmes within the Céim framework this episode gives plenty to think about. It promotes the centrality of social justice in ITE that scaffolds, underpins, overarches and frames a process of enactment over time. Globally teacher education continues to undergo much transformation and reform that is driven by a neo-liberal approach of accountability and standardised approaches while the reality on the ground is that that the preparation of teachers and teaching is a messy, complex and nuanced activity that is both broad and deep and affords many opportunities to be innovative and radical. Professor Aileen Kennedy’s offer views on this and much more besides in this episode, tune in to hear more.

My guest in this episode is Dr. Dylan Scanlon. Dylan is a member of staff in the Physical Education and Sports Science (PESS) department in the University of Limerick, he also works with the National Student Engagement Programme (NSTEP) and the National Forum. Dylan completed his PhD research in the PESS department in the University of Limerick under the supervision of Professor Ann Mac Phail and Dr. Antonio Calderon. His PhD followed a curriculum policy through different curriculum spaces, during which he worked with the Leaving Certificate Physical Education subject which he followed over two years by interviewing curriculum makers, professional development teachers and students as they enacted curriculum policy over that time. His interest in the Sociology of Education is twofold, he completed a Masters in the Sociology of Sport and Exercise with a focus on Physical Education and in his PhD research he focused on how Sociology of Education enables us to look at teachers as policy actors and the concept of policy enactment.  

In this episode Dylan discusses his PhD research and how teachers ‘do’ curriculum policy work and the role of teacher agency in this. He refers to Stephen Ball’s work on Policy enactment rather than focusing on curriculum policy ‘implementation’. Dylan refers to the concept of policy enactment as being a process which is not linear but that is ‘messy’ and complex and looks at multiple different people in multiple different spaces. He mentions how when we look at schools that we see them as a policy enactment context built on a myriad of different interrelated contexts which gives a snapshot of how complex schools actually are and how teachers are policy actors within this complexity. He refers to Ball’s eight actor roles or policy hats within which teachers ‘wear’ different hats within the space they find themselves in as they operate from different perspectives of enacting and ‘doing’ the policy.

Dylan also refers to Mark Priestly’s work on teacher agency and figurational sociology to understand how teachers ‘do curriculum policy work and how important communities of learners are in supporting teachers in their ‘doing’. He talks about the concept of ‘agency’ as being an ill-defined complex concept and connected to this he discusses the concept of ‘teacher agency’. He offers a view of ‘agency’ informed by Mark Priestly’s work as something achieved in either the past or to be achieved in the future as a result of someone’s efforts, the resources available to them, the contextual and structural factors in a particular situation but that agency is in fact enacted in the present. Dylan believes that we need to move away from a discourse that positions a huge amount of belief on the agency of a teacher, something a teacher holds as such and that we never actually fully ‘achieve’ agency but rather that we are constantly working on it and enacting it as interdependent actors which either enables or constrains the achievement of agency. He focuses on the achieving of agency rather than the achievement of agency.

He stresses the importance of communities of learners and quotes from his PhD supervisor, Professor Ann Mac Phail who says that “ we need to stop working in isolation and work with, and learn from, each other” (MacPhail, 2020, p 16). He talks about how if we try and do something on our own it can be challenging and difficult but how when we work together within communities of learners we can work towards achieving agency together within a community of learners of different stakeholders and how powerful this is. 

We also chat about how Covid has impacted on teacher agency and on curriculum policy work, if it been adversely affected and if there have there been gains during Covid.

Another must listen episode that looks at the much mentioned sociological concepts of ‘agency’, ‘teacher agency’ and ‘curriculum policy’ and how this translates into real curriculum policy enactment in real time by real teachers. If you are a practising teacher, student teacher, school leader, policy maker, CPD provider, teacher educator or just interested in education and curriculum policy this episode offers a refreshing view on a non-linear, complex, relational process driven approach which allows for achieving of agency by teachers and challenges us to look differently at the concept of teachers being ‘agents of change’ within what can be a rigid education system. Tune in and listen for more.

My guest this episode is Rachel O Connor. Rachel is Principal in Ramsgrange Community School in Co. Wexford since 2013. Rachel is also Vice President of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), she works as a leadership associate with the Professional Development Support Team (PDST) and is also a mentor for newly appointed principals with the Centre for School Leadership (CSL).

Rachel is a graduate of Maynooth University and started her teaching career in Coláiste Bríde in Clondalkin in Dublin. She moved to Wexford and taught in Loreto Secondary School in Wexford before becoming a Deputy Principal in North Wexford and from there to Ramsgrange Community School. Ramsgrange Community School is a rural DEIS Band 1 coeducational post-primary school, situated out on the Hook peninsula in South West Wexford. Ramsgrange is one of 100 community schools and offers a varied and diverse curriculum at both Junior and Senior Cycle.

We start by discussing connections and manifestation of Sociology of Education in school and the concepts of equity, inequality and equality. Rachel describes how she sees herself as a facilitator of learning and teaching in her role as school principal and how in educational disadvantage that sometimes there are opportunities set up for many and not for some that principals do their very best to ensure that there is greater equity across the board and where possible “balancing the books” in favour of an overall equitable experience for all.

Rachel mentions that as a DEIS rural school it is important to think outside the box, opening the doors, being visible and being available to parents and families, inviting parents to be part of the school, to be connected and building up relationships between the families, the community and the school. She describes how an inclusive pedagogy enhances access for all students to learning and how that is really important where there is a very diverse range of students. She describes how mutual thoughtfulness and respect of both teachers and students are critical to the inclusive pedagogy. Rachel explains how a Restorative Practice approach has led to a very tangible impact on the climate and the culture of her school and has enhanced the social capital of the school.

We discuss the core values of having restorative and resilient conversations underpinned by trust, integrity, acceptance and tolerance and how important these core values are. Rachel also talks about the continuum of support in schools (support for one, support for some and support for all) and how students are prioritised for support on the basis of need, not just arising from empirical data but also on the basis of soft data established through links with the parents, the family and the school, the NCCA passport and much more.

We discuss key challenges for families and students to engagement in school. Rachel believes that subject choice is so important to motivate students and to create opportunities for students to pursue subjects they like and that they are interested in and how this informs choices for the students to pursue after Leaving Certificate. We talk about how there are many options for students post Leaving Certificate and that not all students go to or need to go to College but may instead pursue other routes of interest which have been established in school through subject and programme choice. Rachel focuses on how the greatest opportunities and optimal educational outcomes accrue for students who attend school regularly and how in her school that they promote attendance through the provision of student-centred, student-focused programmes and by targeting the families through the School Completion Programme offering support and pastoral systems at both student and family levels.

We discuss many aspects and examples of how best schools and families connect and continue to connect despite many challenges including Covid and moving ‘from functioning to flourishing’. This is such an inspiring interview that focuses on many aspects of Sociology of Education as they present in a rural post-primary Community School under Rachel O Connor’s leadership and guidance. There are multiple key messages in this podcast episode that will resonate with parents, teachers, students, student teachers, researchers and anyone interested in education. Join us and learn more.

My guest in this episode is Tracie Tobin. Tracie is Principal of St Michael’s Infant School in Limerick City. She graduated from Mary Immaculate College in 1996 with a

B.Ed. degree and in 2008 with a Graduate Diploma in Special Educational Needs.She is particularly interested in the Maths Recovery Programme and completed a

Master’s in Education on this topic in 2009.

Tracie is dedicated to educational disadvantage and has worked in DEIS schools for all of her teaching career. She was elected to the Teaching Council in 2016 where

she represents the primary teachers of Munster. She is currently serving her second four-year term. She is a member of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation’s National Equality Committee where she has represented the teachers of Limerick and Kerry since 2011. Tracie is also chairperson of Bedford Row Family Project which is based in Limerick City. This fosters a strong link between her work in education to the community and outreach programmes offered by the Project to families affected by imprisonment. Tracie is currently the co-lead on the City Connects Implementation Team, a pilot project based in the North East Inner City.

In this episode Tracie describes her own educational journey through both primary and post-primary school and how she was inspired to become a teacher, attending Mary Immaculate College as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate student and onto her current position as Principal of St Michael’s Infant School. We discuss the concept of an infant school and infant education and the importance of infant education as one of the most (if not the most) important aspects of a child’s education. Tracie describes how in her view that DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) is one of the main success stories of Irish education. She emphasises how in her school the emphasis on literacy and numeracy through DEIS was not only very beneficial for the pupils but also for staff as they were offered excellent CPD and training opportunities to implement a variety of programmes.

Tracie also emphasises the importance of school attendance and how every day in school is important regardless of the class they are in but especially in Junior Infants when the initial formative skills are embedded. Tracie describes the diverse nature of the pupil profile in her school and how an inclusive approach enables all children to participate and engage in school. We discuss how connections are made by the school with parents and grandparents in Tracie’s school and how parents engage in a number of different initiatives in the school. Tracie has herself reached out to various agencies in Limerick to further enable meaningful connections and provide a wraparound service for the children in her school. She describes the Oscailt network in Limerick and how it works across both primary and post-primary schools to ensure that families have a positive and integrated experience of school through the EDNEP project.

We talk about many aspects of connections between the Family and the School and how optimising these connections is so beneficial to families and to the pupils in terms of their progression and educational outcomes. Tracie believes that it is her role and the role of educators to empower parents to realise how important they are

in the lives of their children. 

This is an honest, energetic and encouraging listen that demonstrates real Sociology of Education in action in an infant school. Tracie is both dedicated and ambitious for her pupils and their families, this is underpinned by a very compelling social justice approach that is evidenced throughout the episode. For parents, teachers, student-teachers, educators, researchers, policy-makers this is a must-listen episode.

My guest in this podcast episode is Professor Emer Smyth, Emer is a Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). She is Co-Principal Investigator of Growing Up in Ireland (GUI), together with Dorothy Watson, and joint research area coordinator for education.

Her main research interests centre on education, school to work transitions, gender and comparative methodology. She has conducted a number of studies on the effects of schooling contexts on student outcomes, including Do Schools Differ? She led the Post-Primary Longitudinal Study (PPLS), which followed a cohort of young people from the first year of second-level education onwards. Emer has also used GUI data to write reports and journal articles on the transition into primary school, arts and cultural participation among children and young people, spatial variation in child outcomes and the effects of being in a multi-grade class, among other topics.

In this episode Professor Smyth describes how the resources that a family has (money, educational qualifications of parents, love of reading etc) impact and influence a child’s life with specific reference to how pupils progress at school and how the educational system itself shapes outcomes and trajectories for pupils.

She refers to the interaction between the structures we live in and live by and our own experiences and how that plays out over the life-course in particular which is interactive and dynamic. She mentions how longitudinal data can help us to understand how experiences and advantage and disadvantage accumulates over the life-course.

We discuss the Post-Primary Longitudinal Study (PPLS) which was very student-focused and research reports from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) data, also very child-focused and comparisons between Irish based research with global research, engagement of post-primary students and much more.

We talk about diversity in the teaching profession and how ethnicity and nationality

background in particular as diversity factors merits further research attention. She believes that the class gap between teachers and many students is a challenge and how while we are comfortable discussing disadvantage we are not good at naming social class as an issue in education.

We look at research possibilities that students and researchers could focus on including relationships (teachers and students), ability groupings, impact of Covid and further inequalities in short term and long term. Professor Smyth emphasises how there is a high level of trust in the education system in Ireland and how there are very high levels of care evident in the education system with strong indicators of care at all levels. She emphasises how research has shown consistently that for both younger and older students in Ireland

how important relationships and the quality of relationships between teachers and students are. She believes it is the biggest influence on outcomes overall.

This is a really enlightening and informative episode which will be of interest to all student teachers and may be useful in particular those preparing to or undertaking research on their ITE programmes. It will also be useful for teacher educators, teachers, parents, school management and researchers and anyone interested in education in general.