Kathy Hall

University College Cork | UCC · School of Education

Educational change in the neoliberal state is permeated by the effects of forces from outside the field of education itself. The process of governmentality welcomes, indeed demands, the participation of those non-state actors valorised by neoliberalism as well as government agencies dedicated to the advancement of such groups. Inevitably, the conce...

This paper turns the kaleidoscopic lens of Professor Deborah Britzman’s writings on a student teacher story of learning to teach. It begins by briefly setting the context for the research. It then explains the study’s ontological and epistemological focus on experience and how student teacher and researchers create expressions of experience through...

This paper explores affective dimensions to the positioning of teachers within persistent educational inequalities. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies’, we argue that inequalities are not maintained through how teachers and student teachers ‘feel about’ ‘different’ students per se. Rather, the very possibility of becoming a par...

This paper examines post-primary school choice processes in the urban Irish working-class community of Portown. Here, there is an awareness of hegemonic neoliberal ideals and how school choice becomes a significantly classed space characterised by market ideologies and structural inequality. This critical ethnography explored the world through part...

This ground breaking book is unique in bringing together two perspectives on learning - sociocultural theory and neuroscience. Drawing on both perspectives, it foregrounds important developments in our understanding of what learning is, where and how learning occurs and what we can do to understand learning as an everyday process.

While recognising the fact that historically teacher education and adolescent literacy are two fields that have had limited intellectual contact, the development of reading literacy is increasingly now accepted internationally as a core responsibility of all teachers and teacher educators. Adopting a socio-cultural perspective, this paper, drawn fr...

This chapter critically links socio-cultural and neuroscientific perspectives on literacy and learning in a way that confirms the significance of culture, experience, and opportunity to participate in the practices of literacy. It highlights the varied ways in which these practices are pertinent in different social contexts. This integration of soc...

The present study focuses on the way novice teachers, who are part of a one-year postgraduate diploma in post-primary teaching, have opted to negotiate their status as school teachers. In particular, it asks why novice teachers prefer to hide as they scramble to learn how to teach. On the basis of three separate interviews spaced out though the tea...

Presenting the views of national and international experts in initial teacher education, this edited collection is set to become a significant text for those engaged with programme provision and reform. Themes span policy trends and system change, the theory/practice dynamic, ideology and values in teacher education, language teaching and learning,...

What kind of self is being made available and denied to student teachers as they participate in life in their teaching practice schools? In addressing this question empirically, the article seeks to show the forms of meaning being made and experienced by student teachers and the identities that are authored, authorised and constrained. A sociocultu...

Background / Purpose: This poster is based on our forthcoming book Networks of the Mind: a neurocultural perspective on learning (Routledge, 2012). The work interconnects two complimentary perspectives on learning, sociocultural theory and neuroscience.The work demonstrates how sociocultural ideas (such as the relevance of experience/opportunity...

The aim of this research, the Learning to Teach Study (LETS), the first of its kind on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in Ireland, funded by the Department of Education and Skills (DES), was to develop and implement a study of initial teacher education in the PGDE in post-primary education, in the School of Education, University Colleg...

There are no formal structures, arrangements or requirements in relation to teacher observation, coaching or mentoring … While there is no tradition of teacher observation, peer coaching or mentoring in Ireland, there have been a number of pilot projects involving groups of schools and Education Centres in which different approaches to mentoring ha...

Assessment means different things in different contexts and it is carried out for different purposes. There is no simple answer to what it is or why we do it. Assessment is not a simple or innocent term. Assessing learning is not a neutral or value-free activity - it is always bound up with attitudes, values, beliefs and sometimes prejudices on the...

In 2007, the Teaching Council (Ireland) commissioned a team of researchers (Conway, Murphy, Rath & Hall) to undertake a detailed cross-national study on the continuum of teacher education in Ireland and internationally, including initial teacher education (ITE), induction and continuing professional development. The Teaching Council is the professi...

This article reports on a three-year systematic literature review funded by the UK Training and Development Agency for Schools. In order to begin to answer the question posed by the title of this article, the researchers systematically reviewed the literature with reported outcomes for the academic and social inclusion of pupils with special educat...

Schools across the world have responded to international and national initiatives designed to further the development of inclusive education. In England, there is a statutory requirement for all schools to provide effective learning opportunities for all pupils (QCA, 2000) and children with special educational needs (SEN) are positioned as having a...

About the book: This book provides a distillation of knowledge in the various disciplines of arts education. These include dance, drama, music, literature, poetry and visual arts. The handbook synthesizes existing research literature, helps define the past, and contributes to shaping the substantive and methodological future of the respective and i...

This paper compares the incidence of the diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) among White and Asian children with reference to data obtained from thirteen local education authorities (LEAs) in England. It begins by outlining some of the theoretical debates associated with the definition, diagnosis and prevalence of ASD. The empirical comp...

From the introduction/background: The growing demand for inclusive practices within mainstream schools has resulted in classroom teachers having to take direct responsibility for the individual learning needs of all pupils within the setting, and reduced the expectation that support staff should be the primary practitioners for children with specia...

Social exclusion has become a significant policy theme in most 'developed' countries and in many 'developing' countries as well. England and South Africa are no exceptions. Following a brief review of some perspectives on social exclusion, this paper describes some key policies in England and South Africa designed to combat social exclusion. The no...

Adopting a sociocultural theoretical framework and based on ethnographic data from two primary schools, this article seeks to answer the question: what meanings about inclusion and exclusion are encoded in school and classroom practices? It documents the (inclusionary and) exclusionary pedagogic processes that influence learning and children's part...

This article addresses the methodological challenges faced in a pilot study of the processes and cultures of inclusion and exclusion in two primary school classrooms. The authors, who were the research team, engaged with a range of practical and ethical challenges, some of which face any researcher entering classroom contexts and some of which were...

The broad background to this review is a long history of concepts of special pupils and special education, and a faith in special pedagogical approaches. The rise of inclusive schools and some important critiques of special pedagogy (e.g. Hart, 1996; Norwich and Lewis, 2001; Thomas and Loxley, 2001) have raised the profile of teaching approaches th...

This recorded interview with Stephen Anwyll took place in Summer 2004, just prior to his departure from the post of Director of the National Literacy Strategy to take up a new post. In the interview, Stephen challenges those critics who characterise the Strategy as reductive and mechanistic, but recognises the potential for it to be interpreted in...

This paper uses evidence from a small-scale study of two English primary school classrooms to examine school inclusion in its political contexts. We argue that 'inclusion' and 'exclusion' are complex processes, enacted moment-by-moment by pupils and teachers. Our focus is on the pupils' negotiation of these moments, and we examine how their negotia...

This paper examines the effects of key characteristics on achievement at the end of Key Stage 2 with reference to the results of all KS2 pupils in one LEA in the north of England. It offers new evidence of the relative impact of various pupil characteristics on performance by using generalised regression methods, which take account of the structure...

Metacognition is thinking about thinking and there is fairly robust evidence that an awareness of one’s own understanding, especially in reading, is strongly linked with success. Readers who are alert to the problems in their understanding of what they read and can adopt a range of strategies to ‘fix’ these problems tend to be better readers. Kathy...

This study seeks to understand literacy as sociocultural practice and, more specifically, to understand how beliefs about and attitudes towards literacy are constructed in and through classroom discourse. It has been argued that the great divide in literacy is not between those who can and can't read but between those who have and haven't worked ou...

This article is about the way influential groups understand the purposes and forms of assessment in primary education in the Republic of Ireland and the implications of this for official policy at national level. It describes the current assessment policy context and analyses the perspectives of teachers, policy-makers and parents. The methodology...

The article examines supplementary schooling within ethnic minority communities in Leeds and Oslo. Through an analysis of original research involving visits to a sample of supplementary schools in both cities, interviews with teachers and pupils, and reviews of unpublished documentation, the article seeks to understand the scale of provision, varie...

This paper presents findings from a study of the implementation of level descriptions in teacher assessment in England. Previous, theoretical work on assessment criteria suggests that interpretation and application are not straightforward and that practitioners need mechanisms to support consistent application of criteria, and the criteria themselv...

This article seeks to describe and explain the nature of current literacy policy in England, especially the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). It applies Barthes’ concept of ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts to literacy policy documents. The article is not so much about the merits or demerits of the various conceptions of literacy underpinning the doc...

The focus in this paper is on the curriculum relatedness of the Level Descriptions (LDs) and the extent to which teachers' assessment practice is criterion referenced. Its database derives from the official, statutory documents for English in the National Curriculum at Key Stage 1 and semi-structured interviews with a range of practitioners in six...

This paper examines and compares the perceptions of teachers of large and small infant classes in the north of England regarding the likely impact on classroom practice of changes in their current class size. Following an introduction which contextualises the empirical study, details of the research design are summarised. The findings are analysed...

This paper offers a conceptual evaluation of primary assessment policy and the policy process in the Republic of Ireland. It considers, in particular, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment's policy document, A Programme for Reform: curriculum and assessment policy towards the new century and within that, the policy statement, The Curri...

This paper is an adaptation of a paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in August 1998. It reports on a study on reading pedagogy and metacognition in six classrooms in Leeds and six classrooms in Dublin. The evidence is based on 12 teacher interviews, 43 separate lesson observations...

This paper reports on an on‐going study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, on National Curriculum Assessment in English schools. The theme of the paper is how teachers of seven year olds summatively assess achievement in their classrooms. It includes a description of the policy context and the conclusion offers an explanation for...

This paper derives from an ongoing project on the teaching and learning of reading in English and Irish primary classrooms. The project is seeking to understand how reading, and indeed, learning, are conceptualised by pupils and teachers and, particularly, to understand how pedagogy supports (and hinders) the acquisition of metacognitive awareness...

This paper explores similarities and differences in recent curriculum reform in England and Norway, focusing particularly on literacy. The main database consists of the official curriculum policy texts produced in both countries. Literacy is the major focus of the paper and a critical account is offered of current literacy policy in both countries...

This paper examines and compares the beliefs and attitudes of teachers of large and small infant classes in the north of England regarding class size with particular reference to its relative importance. Following an introduction which contex‐tualises the empirical study the details of the telephone and postal surveys are presented. The findings ar...

This short report investigates children's metacognitive awareness and reading. It derives from a larger project which is seeking to understand how literacy and learning are conceptualized by pupils and teachers and, more particularly, to understand how pedagogy supports (and hinders) the acquisition of metacognitive awareness and learning strategie...

This paper examines and compares some aspects of the academic and social experiences of first-year teacher education students at two colleges, one in England and the other in the Republic of Ireland. It describes the transition from second level (and, for some, the transition from further education) to third level education and offers an account of...

This paper is based on semi‐structured interviews with 59 Year 2 teachers across 45 schools in one LEA. It documents their practice of and attitudes to teacher assessment and it proposes a developmental model which describes and explains their approaches. The assessment of process skills is analysed and the effects of assessment on children's learn...

About the book: Introduction: Debating education: A beginner's guide Part 1. The state of education 1. The formalisation of relationships in education 2. The interventionist state and the state of UK education 3. Educating the people 4. The philosophy gap Part 2. Policing the classroom 5. Re-enacting early childhood? 6. Afraid to teach? 7. Literacy...

This paper addresses issues raised by the systematic literature review process. The authors are currently examining the literature on the pedagogy of mainstream teachers and support staff that effectively include children with special educational needs, with a view to assessing the interactions of peers, teachers and support staff. This paper sets...

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Learning to Read brings together different disciplinary perspectives and studies on reading for all those who seek to extend and enrich the current practice, research and policy debates. The breadth of knowledge that underpins pedagogy is a central theme and the book will help educators, policymakers and researcher...