Irish Teachers Research Articles

Beginning Pre-service Teachers’ Approaches to Teaching the Area Concept: identifying tendencies towards realistic, structuralist, mechanist or empiricist mathematics education

SUMMARY This study, on approaches to mathematics education, aims to identify curricular frameworks that are robust across cultures and education systems. Lesson ideas of Irish and Dutch pre-service teachers were studied to identify the selections of: (1) the basic aspects of the concept of area; and (2) the real-life contexts, shapes, and manipulatives chosen to teach this concept. A two-dimensional framework emerged, relating preservice teachers’ ideas to archetypal realistic, structuralist, mechanist, or empiricist approaches.

The politics of equality: catherine mahon and the irish national teachers’ organisation, 1905-1916

The politics of equality: catherine mahon and the irish national teachers’ organisation, 1905-1916

In‐service training for teachers involved in link schemes: a consultative process

This article reviews the background to the current development of link schemes offering students (pupils) in mainstream and special settings an experience of functional integration. It documents the design and evaluation of in‐service training for Irish teachers involved in developing link programmes. The content of two training workshops and the teachers' evaluation of their impact are presented, and recommendations for further development and evaluation of an in‐service training process are suggested.

The ethnographic interview as a personal journey

The opportunity for language teachers to spend some time in a country where their language is spoken, is one which is highly valued as a way of updating linguistic skills and knowledge of the culture. Often the period is short, but whatever the length, teachers need to profit from the stay as much as possible. The argument in this article is that through the ethnographic interview teachers can gain a deeper understanding of an aspect of a foreign culture from an insider viewpoint, and simultaneously learn how to analyse and interpret the insider account from an observer's perspective. Teachers will then be in a position to mediate and interpret for their learners, and to provide them with data and techniques for developing their own understanding independently. The article describes materials developed for in‐service training and a pilot course which tested them with a group of Irish teachers about to spend some time in France.

The social background and career profiles of Irish teachers

The social background and career profiles of Irish teachers

The application of research on classroom management to an in‐service programme

This paper describes a study which examined recent research on classroom management and translated the findings into a skills-based in-service programme on the theme of Effective Classroom Management. The impetus for the programme was triggered by a perception of malaise among Irish teachers. Teachers in Ireland have complained that their role has been increasing in complexity, that stress levels have been rising and that little assistance has been forthcoming to help them to come to terms with their deteriorating situation. Against this background, the provision of an in-service programme on classroom management seemed a practical way to proceed.

Bald'sLeechbookand cultural interactions in Anglo-Saxon England

The Old English medical records are rich in materials which contain evidence for contacts between the Anglo-Saxons and other cultures. For example, in 1945 Howard Meroney collected the various loan translations of Irish words found in the medical charms in theLeechbook, Lacnungaand other Old English texts. It is an interesting exercise to speculate on how Irish charms such as these, in Old Irish, got into the Old English medical repertory in their pristine form, whereas most of the Latin medical charms were translated straightway into English. It is customary to suppose that the Anglo-Saxons picked them up from Irish teachers in their monasteries, but there may be other explanations. Recently, while I was reading theHisperica famina(in Michael Herren's translation), I came across references to young ‘visitors’, students who wandered about the Irish countryside begging for food and shelter among the country people, with whom they had difficulty communicating; as one of them is made to say:Who will ask these possessorsto grant us their sweet abundance?For an Ausonian chain binds me;hence I do not utter good Irish speech.