Books in the Rethinking Education series

Brings a fresh approach to Irish educational debates, in which qualified educational specialists engage collaboratively in interdisciplinary reflection on their own teaching and learning. The volume addresses a multiplicity of key issues in Irish education, including teacher formation, curriculum development, teaching and learning methods.

Ensuring quality in and through teaching and learning has become a fundamental global concern. This book brings together a series of background and case study chapters from leading scholars in the field of teacher education internationally. It interrogates how quality cultures can be fostered in the field of education.

Emanating from a conference celebrating one hundred years of women in university education in Ireland ('Women in Higher Education: Have Women Made a Difference?', 2007), this title brings together papers from leading scholars in the fields of education, history, literature, nursing, social policy and women's studies.

This book won the best first book prize, awarded by the History of Education Society This is the first published historical analysis of the development of infant education in Ireland. It spans the period from the opening of the Model Infant School in Marlborough Street, Dublin, in 1838 to the introduction of the child-centred curriculum for infant classes in 1948. A study of early childhood education in Ireland in this period provides an understanding of how the child, childhood and the early years of school were viewed by society. Child-centredness had become a feature of educational practice in Europe in the early eighteenth century and was developed further by Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel. How it manifested itself in schools in Ireland is critically explored in the book through an examination of key reports, as well as through new original primary source material not previously in the public domain. The curricular content, pedagogical approaches and organisation of infant schooling reveal much about the attitudes of those in authority to the youngest children and their educational needs. Interviews with kindergarten advisors, national (primary) school inspectors, lecturers on early childhood education, teachers of infants, and adults who were students in the early decades of the twentieth century provide further insights and enhance our understanding of policies and practices of the time.

Today's learners are faced with an unprecedented set of global and local development challenges, yet so much education on offer is based on yesterday's thinkers, ideas and lessons. This book argues that development education should be embedded into the curriculum, where it has the potential to strengthen democracy and create a more equal society.

Attempts to explain children's ability to focus on language as medium rather than message have varied dramatically over the years. Studies in the field of metacognition have shown that this has a bearing on children's growing metalinguistic awareness. Conversely, children's ability to reflect upon and control their own use of language has been seen to have a bearing on the emergence of general metacognitive processes. However, significant differences have emerged not only in the interpretation of the research findings but also in the attempt to reconcile such findings with those of traditional anecdotal sources and to create more explanatory theoretical models. Starting with a critical review of the various theoretical approaches in the area of metacognition, this book explores in detail a socio-cultural approach, examining the origin, function and cognitive status of metalinguistic awareness. By elaborating and refining the analysis of writers such as Vygotsky in the light of new developments in relevant fields, the author also seeks to outline a model which can be applied to the pedagogic process. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of children's language development, applied linguistics and cognitive psychology, as well as to teachers of foreign languages at all levels.

Brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to 'harness' this diversity for learners' benefit.

This book critically examines the context, origins, development and implementation of successive primary school curricula in Ireland between 1897 and 1990. It focuses on three particular policy changes during the period: the Revised Programme of Instruction introduced in 1900, the curricular provisions implemented following the achievement of independence in the 1920s and the Primary School Curriculum of 1971. These three eras are distinctive by virtue of their philosophy of education, the content of the curriculum, the methodologies employed and the concept of the child inherent in the curriculum. The author analyses curricular changes within the complex web of wider educational and societal factors that influenced their devising and implementation. In this way, he locates curricular developments within the climate of thought from which these policies emerged. The philosophy and ideology underpinning successive curricula are examined, along with the successes and shortcomings of curriculum implementation in each period. This historical analysis of the evolution of the primary curriculum in Ireland has much to offer researchers and policymakers in the contemporary context, amid ongoing curriculum development.

Uncovers an ancient Irish perspective of learning and reconfigures it to offer a vitality-restoring vision for education in our digital age. This book aims to help re-engage learners of the Net generation meaningfully and with enjoyment in the learning process.

This volume offers stimulating reading about 'rethinking education' in the light of new multimedia tools and platforms and the emergence of social media. It calls for twenty-first-century learners to develop digital, entrepreneurial, collaborative and group work competencies, along with creative and critical thinking.

This book follows three collaborative inquiry studies carried out by the author with other foreign language educators in Ireland, the UK and the US. The studies focus on the ongoing interaction between educators, student-teachers and language learners, and the project's aim is to examine the impact of 'transformative pedagogy'.

This book promotes adult education in a university setting as cultivation and the inculcation of culture, democracy, and ethics beyond and through lived experience. It draws on theories from across disciplines, bringing together Aristotelian and post-structuralist thought. This includes Fernando Pessoa's notion of 'erudition' as culture and 'disquiet' as a mode of contemplative living, with Fernand Deligny's 'wanting' as manifestation of life. Liana Psarologaki addresses the pathologies of life and higher education in advanced capitalist societies and creates a manifesto for a new type of university pedagogy.Liana Psarologaki is an architect, artist, educator, and creative scholar based in the UK.