New Minister for Education

Hopefully interesting times ahead with the appointment of Ruairi Quinn as minister for Education. He has previously described the Department of Education and Skills as "malignantly incompetent". Should be an interesting first meeting!

I really think there is strong potential for change here, all the more so for the financial crisis that exists. There is a recognition that it is important not only to address the banking sector but the whole political and decision-making system. Great opportunity here to effect fundamental change. So glad too to see Mary Hannafin gone hopefully for good. When you think of what she could have achieved as minister with unprecedented levels of funding and a really well developed plan for change from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). Instead we were not allowed to consider a "Rolls Royce" system of Education.

We (University of Limerick) will be hosting a conference in May with the NCCA and Educate Together (ET) entitled "Reimagining Learning" in Limerick to consider concrete approaches to realising the ET curriculum blueprint for secondary schools. Hopefully we can get the minister to attend and assist the decision making process not just for ET but nationally. I really think the blueprint is closely aligned with the "Innovations and Identity" consultation document published by the NCCA especially in the area of Integrated Curriculum, a key focus of the conference.

I am also involved in curriculum development work in Limerick city which I cannot yet describe in detail but has significant funding from Atlantic Philanthropies. Hope to bring in the NCCA on this too.
On the science education side of things, the Virtual Chemistry Lab work has really developed and we have a recent publication on ICT integration in schools that was very well received. We have learned so much from the participating teachers and students who have given so generously of their time and expertise. Hope to publish 3 more papers in the area soon. One of them focuses on Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and this has proved a very interesting construct in 3 other PhDs which I will write more on in time. I have just come home from Lesotho in fact where we had a fascinating workshop with teachers who described their PCK in the area of cell division (mitosis and meiosis). The tools we used (developed by Loughran) are very powerful and I think have great potential not just as methodological approaches but also as a structure for professional development.

Will go into detail on some of these things soon. Exciting times ahead.

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Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Inquiry Based Science Education

As mentioned above, I attended a conference in Berlin marking the conclusion of the “Pollen” network which was set up to promote Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE) in primary schools across 10 European countries. Some of the key points for me were

• Some level of IBSE has always taken place in European schools although this would vary from country to country e.g. Hands-on, practical work is emphasised in the UK compared to say, Ireland. It is therefore culturally situated.
  
• It is difficult to unambiguously define IBSE as such definitions are invariably value-laden. There is a lot of debate as to what exactly constitutes IBSE which makes evaluating the impact of interventions problematic. The literature on educational change makes it clear that it is critical to have clarity about what is intended in order that interventions persist beyond the period of funding and are owned by all stakeholders.

It seems to me that it is important to get an idea of how IBSE is “operationalised” in each of the countries involved - what evidence is there for IBSE practice and how does change (if at all) as a result of interventions? This would allow us to get away from a purely academic debate as to what constitutes IBSE to determine it “empirically”. The question then becomes, how do we gain insight into the nature of IBSE?

I think Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) might prove a useful framework here. PCK was first introduced as a concept to describe teaching practice by Shulman in 1986. As the name would imply, it represents the particular domain knowledge of the teacher at the intersection of the Venn diagram between pedagogy and content knowledge, including awareness of analogies, likely conceptions and misconceptions, effective tasks, and so on. This concept proved very attractive in science educational research and several authors have made significant contributions to developing PCK “tools”. John Loughran in particular has developed PCK tools that describe and have been shown to have a transformative impact on teaching practice.

Why not try and use these tools to get an explicit idea of the nature of practice and how it transforms? Is it possible to gain some insight into the issues raised above? Would be very interesting I think to see this across all of Europe. For now, we are hoping to get it off the ground in Ireland.

Must start adding to this more fequently!

First post

Hello all,

I'm entirely new to this but would like to give it a try to discuss aspects of Educational Change in Ireland with a particular focus on second level (middle and high school or ages 12-18) and higher education although I have some interests in the primary school science curriculum. I am specifically interested in educational change, science education, active learning, and integrated curriculum. I am working in the University of Limerick (UL) and have several ongoing projects in the following areas

• A Virtual Chemistry Laboratory for Irish Post-Primary Schools (VCLIPPS): we are developing a lab for senior cycle chemistry in collaboration with Carnegie-Mellon University who are providing the base code. We are engaging with all stakeholders including policy makers, teachers and students. Interesting results from early interviews are indicating radically different perspectives - more anon. We hope to integrate VCLIPPS into the assessment system of the revised senior cycle syllabus (key skills framework), providing a vehicle for the authentic assessment of problem solving and inquiry-based approaches to learning.


• Educational Interventions for Sustainable Regeneration: UL has a strong commitment to the regeneration efforts in the city. We are examining the possibility of "replicating" the success on the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild (MCG) in Pittsburgh, USA. This remarkable school (setup and run by Bill Strickland - well worth a look by the way) is located in a district with the highest crime rate in the state where it achieves remarkable success with 95% of incoming students progressing to college. They also have an adult training centre with sponsorship from companies that has a nigh 100% employment rate. We are collaborating with the UPCLOSE group from the University of Pittsburgh to try to understand how MCG uses the creative arts, informal and personalised learning to create meaning in the lives of students and switch them on to learning.


• Improving science teaching and learning through Inquiry-based dialogue: this work is focused on supporting primary school science teaching and learning. Many primary (elementary) teachers confess to low levels of confidence in teaching science, primarily due to limited Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK - see below) which arises from limited exposure to science teaching during pre-service and in-service education. As a result they tend to keep things "tight" in the classroom and limit inquiry and questions. This is a pity since the primary science syllabus is essentially experiential in nature. We aim to study dialogue in classrooms to produce a set of audio-visual and text resources to examine what impacts these "scaffolds" can have on teaching practice. All going well, our results will be input into a Virtual Tutor (conversational agent) that will interact with teachers and students alike.


• An Educate Together Secondary School Curriculum: Educate Together (ET) provides multi-denominational, democratic education at primary school level in Ireland. It is pretty unique as almost all other providers at this level are run by religious institutions (unlike every other European state I think). It is a rapidly growing organisation (12 new schools opened last year) with huge demand from parents for places. We are now working on a second-level curriculum and lobbying the Department of Education and Science (DES) to recognise ET as patrons at second-level. This curriculum is very exciting and looks to place the student at the center of a democratic system of learning where they define what interests them from the beginning of the school year and teachers devise problem-based approaches to learning that reflect these interests (Integrated Curriculum). We are exploring exciting professional structures for teachers using peer-coaching and student observation and feedback to teachers. Teaching approaches will draw on the most recent results emerging from the literature as to what makes a difference in student learning ("evidence-informed" - a contentious term - more later) - see "Visible Learning" by John Hattie for details. You can get more information from ET head office here and please support this in any way you can.

I am developing further interests in PCK (with John Loughrane in Australia) as a distinct area of investigation following on from a conference I attended in Berlin (great city) on the results of the Pollen network which was setup to promote Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) in primary schools across Europe, but more on that later.

Well there's a start to my blog!