Dr
Rosie
Savage
Academic biography
Rosie is an Assistant Professor in the School of Inclusive and Special Education.
She has worked for over 30 years in education in both the UK and Ireland. She draws on significant educational experience obtained across a wide range of secondary and primary schools in the UK as a mainstream and special class teacher, Head of Department and member of the senior leadership team. She has taught in highly diverse and inclusive mainstream classrooms, specialist provisions (autism and Nurture Groups) and in a specialist residential school for young people with social, emotional and mental health difficulties.
Rosie also has considerable assessment experience, leading the national state examinations in England for GCSE and A Level Sociology at the AQA examination board.
Rosie currently leads four postgraduate modules, teaches across a range of programmes at post-graduate level and supervises at Masters and Doctoral level.
Rosie was the School Ethics Advisor beteween 2020-2025. She is a member of the Research Centre for Inclusive Pegagogy and the Educational Disadvantage Centre, DCU. She is an active member of the Holistic Educational Needs of Children in Care Working Group and represents the school at DCU's Civic Engagement Forum.
Rosie is the Programme Chair of the Masters in Education in Special Educational Needs (M.Ed.EN), having previously been Programme Chair of the Professional Diploma in Special and Inclusive Education (2015-2018), a large, online Certificate and Diploma programme co-delivered with an external partner.
Rosie completed her doctoral research at Queen's University, Belfast, exploring primary special education teachers' perspectives regarding the educational progress of children in care.
She holds the following qualifications:
- Ed.D, Queen's University, Belfast
- MA (Hons) in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh
- M.Sc. in Medical Sociology from the University of London (winning one of two competitive ESRC awards)
- M.Ed. in Inclusive and Special Education (Specialisms: Autism & SEMH) from the University of Birmingham
- Post-Graduate Certificate in Autism
- Post-Graduate Certificate in Education from the Institute of Education University of London where she qualified as a teacher
- Qualified Nurture Group teacher (Nurture UK) and Emotion Coach (Emotion Coaching UK).
Research interests
Key research interests are:
Children's social and emotional wellbeing and mental health.
Children in Care/Care experienced children/'Children at Risk' - their educational needs including social, emotional wellbeing and mental health
Autism, particularly positive learner identity, strengths-based approach, social and emotional wellbeing and mental health.
Attachment aware school based approaches e.g. whole school trauma informed approach, relational and nurture-based approaches, emotion coaching
Inclusive practice for mainstream primary teachers - particularly focused on relational pedagogies.
Intersectionality between disadvantage and SEND.
Assessment for learning; developing pupil autonomy, pupil voice and positive learner identity.
Qualitative research approaches