Professional Educational Psychology and Community Relations Education in Northern Ireland.

This article provides an account of practice-based research of, at least, one-star quality in terms of its contribution to both theory and practice. Aimed at practitioner (as opposed to academic) psychologists, the article addresses a dimension of the practitioner role that has remained silent in the literature. The article makes creative and original connections between school effectiveness, school improvement and education in a divided society. Post 11th September, the article was described as being highly original, significant and relevant to all practising educational psychologists. Concrete evidence for this is gained from, eg: hits on the online electronic version (2002-2003 Annual Report of the Association of Educational Psychologists), citations in reviews of research, and author invitations to present his work at UK and international practitioner psychology conferences. The article is published in the premier journal reporting on quality applied educational research and practice within the United Kingdom and beyond.

Citizenship training in school from the perspective of future primary education teachers

The aim of this paper is to recognize the images that prospective elementary school teachers have about citizenship and citizenship education in school. The qualitative methodology with an ethnographic approach is used for that deep interview of ethnographic kind and analysis of institutional documents, for example, curricula, course syllabus and graduated profi le. The revision of documents helps to a better understanding of discourses. The analysis of the corpus obtained after the application of the paradigm of codifi cation proposed in the established theory. As the principal fi ndings we way point out that the concept of citizens that is common among prospective elementary school teachers is reduced to the school environment because they consider that the promotion of citizenship helps to the incorporation of children to society, thus reproducing a propaedeutic view of education.

Competence in research planning in the fourth level of Spanish Secondary Education: a case study

In the last years, “Inquiry-Based Science Education” methodologies (IBSE) are being recommended by European institutions in order to improve the competence levels and the attitudes towards science of primary and secondary school students. Therefore, the aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of an IBSE methodology, the Methodology of Problem Solving as an Investigation (MPSI), for the teaching-learning process of planning of experiments in the fourth level of Spanish Secondary Education. By means of the students’ solutions for a series of open problems, the progress in the learning of the competences related to the planning of experiments has been analyzed, along with the influence of the methodology on the development of these competencies. The results show a students’ command from higher to lower levels on: emission of hypothesis, design of the experiment, qualitative analysis, identification of variables and reformulation of the open problem. Furthermore, the Methodology has contributed to an improvement of the scientific competence in the area of planning experiments.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst our students.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on a Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst students.

Citizens as Social Work Educators in a Post-Conflict Society: Reflections from Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT This paper examines how service users and carers can contribute to social work education in a post conlict society. A small-scale study undertaken in Northern Ireland is used as a case study to show how such citizens can potentially critically contribute to social work students’ understanding of the impact of conlict on individuals, groups and communities. The need to appreciate the effects of such community division is now a core knowledge requirement of the social work curriculum in Northern Ireland. The article reports on research indings with service users, carers and agency representatives which points to ways in which social work students can achieve a critical understanding of the impact of conlict. Northern Ireland, in this way, is presented as a divided society, still in a state of adjustment and evolution, following a period of protracted community strife and violence. The author suggests that individuals who have been directly affected by conlict can contribute in an informed and critical way to social work students’ developing knowledge and experience in an important area of their professional competence and understanding of anti-oppressive practice more broadly.

Towards Educational Inclusion in a Contested Society: From Critical Reflection to Cultural Action

This paper is written by democratic educators who stand for the idea that is it worth developing, through classrooms and schools, a socially just (egalitarian), anti-discriminatory society where interdependent relationships are valued. This paper significantly develops some of the ideas explored in the authors’ earlier contribution concerned with progress in Northern Ireland towards educational inclusion, and how this might more effectively advance in a post-conflict transforming society. In particular, the paper poses the ‘so what’ question, and it responds by exploring the practical implications of six key ideas thought essential for transforming learning environments supportive of cultural diversity, equity and excellence for all. In addition, it includes examples of how school staff, along with collaborating partners, might utilize these key principles in order to facilitate school improvement.

The integrated school in a conflict society: a comparative analysis of two integrated primary schools in Northern Ireland

The purpose of this paper is to compare the approach to promoting positive relationships between Catholics and Protestants in two types of integrated primary school in Northern Ireland. Drawing on qualitative interviews with teachers, governors and parents in one transforming school and one grant maintained integrated school, i.e. one representative of each of the two types, the paper shows that whilst there are distinctions in the ways that the schools promote their image and ethos, the ‘lived reality’ of the schools, as reported by the research participants, is almost indistinguishable. The paper suggests that both schools tend not to refer to or explore cultural difference and that this tendency to ‘minimise difference’ seems to have the potential to silence school members who do wish to explore their own and other cultures. It is argued that such practices are likely to impede rather than facilitate the progress of good inter-community relations.

Citizenship education in divided societies: Teachers’ perspectives in Northern Ireland

This paper aimed to investigate in what ways teachers’ developing understandings of citizenship education in a divided society reflect discourses around national citizenship and controversial issues. Based on thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 post-primary teachers in Northern Ireland undertaking an in-service programme in citizenship, findings indicate that the controversial nature of past conflict maintains its sensitivity in the educational context though other categories of potential exclusion, such as race and sexuality, compete for space in educational discourse and teaching. Few teachers used controversial issues identified as challenging hegemonic beliefs as an opportunity for role modelling citizenship. However, teachers rarely explored the complex interlinkages between traditional and alternative categories of exclusion. It is argued that this may render teachers’ understandings of citizenship and societal conflict disconnected, which in turn may hinder the potential for citizenship education to address societal divisions and to promote active peace in the long-term.

Leadership for inclusion: Conceptualising and enacting inclusion in integrated schools in a troubled society

Inclusion is increasingly understood as an educational reform that responds to the diversity of all learners, challenging the marginalization, exclusion and underachievement which may result from all forms of ‘difference’. Leadership for inclusion is conceptualized here as driving a constant struggle to create shared meanings of inclusion and to build collaborative practice, an effort that needs to be rooted in critical practice lest it risk replicating existing patterns of disadvantage. In response to calls for further research that challenge how school leaders conceptualize inclusion and for research that investigates how leaders enact their understandings of inclusion, this paper aims to increase our understanding of the extent to which leadership vision can map onto a school’s culture and of the organizational conditions in schools that drive responses to diversity. We investigate the enactment of leadership for inclusion in the troubled context of Northern Ireland by looking at two schools that primarily aim to integrate Catholic and Protestant children but which are also sites for a range of other dimensions of student ‘difference’ to come together. Whilst the two schools express differing visions of the integration of Catholics and Protestants, leadership vision of inclusion is enacted by members of the school community with a consensus around this vision brought about by formal and informal aspects of school culture. Multiple and intersecting spheres of difference stimulate a concerted educational response in both schools but integration remains the primary focus. In this divided society, religious diversity poses a significant challenge to inclusion and further support is required from leaders to enable teachers to break through cultural restraints.