Research interests

My main research interests lie in mapping how teachers and leaders of schools in post-primary education in Ireland have become curriculum makers.  The theoretical framework I am navigating is taken from the work of Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (2003).  It draws on concepts such as striated and smooth space, difference, both degree and kind, and nomad.  This study emerges from my doctoral thesis which called on further research to map the changes taking place in lower secondary education as a result of the new Junior Cycle curriculum.  It asks how are teachers approaching Learning Outcomes and what methodology, assessment, both formative and summative, are they engaging with to make the educational encounter a more student-centred and holistic affair.
Recently, I have begun a research project mapping the teacher perspective on the Calculated Grades for Leaving Certificate 2020 through a mixed methods approach.  I have joined with Professor Michael O'Leary from CARPE and Dr Zita Lysaght from the School of Policy and Practice on this project.
I am also engaged in working on research in a day and boarding school in Dublin to study how they can approach the problem of bullying in the school.  This study will use a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, which is flexible and inclusive (Stoudt et al., 2010; O’Brien, Moules and Munn-Giddings., 2018). I have linked with Dr Niamh O'Brien from Anglia Ruskin University, Essex, Great Britain for this project.