Martin Brown

Dublin City University | DCU · School of Policy and Practice

Background: A number of countries have had school inspection for many years. The origins of these systems date back to the nineteenth century when mass public schooling was introduced, and education and other emerging public services were required to comply with centrally mandated rules and programmes. In contrast, many countries across the world h...

Current approaches to the regulation of schools in most jurisdictions tend to combine elements of external inspection with systems of internal self-evaluation. An increasingly important aspect of the theory and practice of both, but particularly the latter, revolves around the role of other actors, primarily parents and students, in the process. Us...

The core theory of polycentric inspection is that when schools reach a certain quality threshold, they can further improve best through a coordinated, collaborative effort between clusters of schools and external agencies such as, for example, social services and training providers. The suggested role of an external agency with the respect and reso...

En casi todos los sistemas educativos cada vez se incentiva más el interés por establecer y promover redes educativas locales. En el caso de Irlanda, se han establecido redes educati-vas financiadas conocidas como ‘education clusters’ fomentar la colaboración entre centros educativos con el objetivo de mejorar su capacidad innovadora, así como la r...

School and teacher accountability have had a somewhat fluctuating existence in Irish education. For example, in the nineteenth century, and up to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, various frameworks for teacher and school accountability, such as incidental inspections and the Payment by Results system, were regular and at times an unne...

The importance of school self-evaluation (SSE) as a school improvement mechanism has been acknowledged by increases in the number of countries with legal requirements for schools to conduct self-evaluation. Despite the provision of a range of support to schools to encourage their engagement with SSE, many implementation challenges have been highlig...

The paper begins with an overview of migration-related diversity in Austria and Ireland, both countries with high levels of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity in schools. Research in Europe indicates that migration produces a new context for teaching, for which many teachers do not feel sufficiently prepared. Hence, teacher education is a...

Almost all countries throughout the world have in place various means of academically sorting students that in most cases occurs at the higher educational level. In the main, those students who achieve the highest scores in externally devised examinations have a greater choice of what higher education course they wish to pursue. However, in Norther...

Evidence-informed practice (EIP), broadly conceived as a data and research-based approach to enhance practice, has recently come to the fore of the Irish education system. With changes to the structure and duration of professional education over the last decade, most notably Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs, coupled with the implementation...

La evaluación en el aula con perspectiva culturalmente sensible. Un estudio de caso de escuelas de secundaria en Irlanda Abstract This paper describes the current state of development in terms of the employment of culturally responsive modes of assessment in five secondary schools in Ireland. The study was part of a project, including partners from...

This paper, as part of a European Commission-funded project entitled REBEL (Repurposing Education through Blended Learning), deconstructs school communities understanding of the challenges and opportunities for blended learning in the school sector in Ireland with perceptions shaped by experiences of enforced school closures during the pandemic. It...

This small-scale design-based study describes a cyclical model of professional learning between three stakeholders in initial teacher education (ITE) namely: university-based educators (UEs), student teachers (STs) and co-operating teachers (CTs). This model promotes the development of digital learning leaders through an innovative mentoring proces...

This paper shows how the commitment of senior leadership teams to student voice is not necessarily shared by teachers. As part of a wider study, this paper presents qualitative data generated through interviews with school staff in one Irish post-primary school with a strong culture of student voice to illustrate the discrepancy that can exist betw...

This paper picks up and elaborates on the conception of policy translators in schools – key actors in the enactment of policy. The qualitative data presented here highlight how it is often middle leaders doing high-profile policy work in schools, turning ideas into actions and bringing policy to life. As translators, they organise, manage, lead, pl...

School self-evaluation (SSE) has become a key strategy in terms of safeguarding educational quality. In order to reach its full potential, it is argued that parents and students should be given a role in an SSE process, as they can help understand the complex environment in which schools operate. However, little is known about how different educati...

School self-evaluation (SSE) has emerged as a widely used approach to school evaluation in recent decades. This has occurred in the context of what is referred to as “New Public Management,” an element of which seeks to empower public institutions to make decisions locally about improving their processes and standards. Inspection regimes in many co...

This paper reflects on compulsory school self-evaluation in Ireland. It sets important historical and contemporary context by documenting the development of a culture of evaluation in Ireland throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium before charting the rise of school self-evaluation during the austere economic conditions of post-2008 Irelan...

Different countries have different histories, traditions, cultures, and practices of student voice and are currently at different stages of their student voice journeys. This paper investigates how student voice is coming to be used in relation to classroom practice in different school types and socio-economic settings in the Irish education system...

Whether voluntary or enforced, increasing patterns of migration have significantly impacted schools by making them linguistically, culturally, religiously and ethnically more diverse than ever before. This increasing diversity requires school leaders to put in place mechanisms to ensure equity of participation for migration background students. Dim...

This paper makes a novel and important contribution to scholarship by developing and presenting a set of concepts and questions for those researching student voice in Ireland to consider and explore in their studies, and specifically in relation to classroom practice at post-primary level. Here, a distinction is drawn between consultations that tak...

Abstract School self-evaluation (SSE) has become a key strategy in terms of safeguarding educational quality. In order to reach its full potential, it is argued that parents and students should be given a role in an SSE process, as they can help understand the complex environment in which schools operate. However, little is known about how differen...

School self-evaluation (SSE) or data-based decision making is now a common feature of mainstream education in an increasing number of jurisdictions. The participation of stakeholders including students, is promoted internationally as a key feature of effective SSE. Despite this, very little research has been carried out on how education systems mig...

Using multisite case studies in four European countries, the purpose of this paper was to explore school leaders and teachers views on School Self Evaluation (SSE), its role in school improvement and the capacity of schools to engage with the process. Evidence derived from the study suggests that although there is a consensus among school leaders c...

This paper provides an analysis of the leadership and planning strategies employed by school leaders during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It draws on a series of focus group interviews with school principals from all school types in Northern Ireland. Results derived from the study shows that despite the benefits of various modes of leadership such as dist...

School self-evaluation is a low-stakes policy recently mandated in Ireland and while schools are becoming more consistent in engaging in this internal mode of evaluation, their engagement has not been uniform. This paper provides new ways of thinking about, understanding, and explaining how school self-evaluation plays out in Irish schools. Subscri...

This paper examines the rise of networking in education, paying particular attention to the recent recognition of their importance during the unprecedented challenges that have emerged for schools during the COVID-19 period. The paper begins with an overview of the development of network theory, exploring how the concept has been adopted across a s...

This paper reports on the operation of the DCU Shaped Professional Learning Network (DCU SPLN), an initiative of the Centre for Evaluation Quality and Inspection (EQI) at Dublin City University. The DCU SPLN was initially established in Belfast, Northern Ireland as part of the Erasmus+ Project, 'Polycentric inspections of networks of schools', the...

There has been much public discussion about church-controlled schools north and south and the potential issues involved if constitutional change was to occur. However, there has been far less debate about Northern Ireland's use of academic selection and its impacts. To fill the research gap in this area and based on a review of the literature on ac...

There has been much public discussion about church-controlled schools north and south and the potential issues involved if constitutional change was to occur. However, there has been far less debate about Northern Ireland's use of academic selection and its impacts. To fill the research gap in this area and based on a review of the literature on ac...

In this paper, we provide an overview of the development of school inspection in Ireland over the past twenty years using the analytic and critical lens developed by Richard Boyle in partnership with the current authors. The paper is fundamentally a reflection on the nature, purpose and operation of evaluation in the Irish public sector through the...

This report is derived from a three-year Erasmus plus European Union-funded project entitled ‘Distributed Evaluation and Planning in Schools’ (DEAPS) that commenced in September 2017 and concluded in November 2020. The project explored how the role of parents and pupils is being received and implemented in school evaluation policy and practice and...

The purpose of this paper, which is part of a three-year EU Erasmus+-funded study titled 'Distributed Evaluation and Planning in Schools' (DEAPS), is to provide an analysis of policies, structures, processes, supports and barriers that exist to enable or inhibit the involvement of students and parents in school evaluation in four European countries...

As with school self-evaluation in most European countries, the Irish education system now promotes the involvement and inclusion of stakeholders such as parents and students in the evaluation process. Yet, in the Irish context, there is limited research exploring the role of these stakeholders in this internal mode of school evaluation. To address...

Global mobility and economic and political crises in some parts of the world have fuelled migration and brought new constellations of ‘cultural diversity’ to European classrooms (OECD 2019). This produces new challenges for teaching, but also for assessment in which cultural biases may have far-reaching consequences for the students’ further career...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake.

Este kit de herramientas es el resultado de un proyecto titulado Supervising schools in the 21st century: Digital tools and improvement plans (SS21DTIP). El objetivo del proyecto era fortalecer los procesos de mejora que se llevan a cabo dentro de los centros educativos mediante la descripción de procedimientos y técnicas, así como a través de la c...

School inspection systems have undergone a transformation in response to the changing social and economic scenarios across Europe. However, two major approaches can easily be identified that also define the two ends of the continuum of the approaches to school inspection. On one end is a high stake sanctions oriented inspection while on the other e...

Evaluation practice in Ireland has gone through a number of phases. Prior to the early 1990s, evaluation tended to be periodic and ad hoc. Due in large part to the influence of the EU a strong and comprehensive evaluation practice was developed during the 1990s. As the importance of structural funding from the EU declined in the early 2000s, so too...

Across the world, teachers’ classroom assessment tasks and responsibilities are becoming more diverse due to increased migration. In this review, we address how migrant students are affected by assessment, both summative and formative, at the classroom level, with a focus on culturally responsive assessment (CRA). Previous research has shown that C...

This study explores the development and implementation of a professional development intervention for teachers in data-use as part of a whole school self-evaluation (SSE) process. A review of literature relating to professional development in general and data-use in particular informs the key features of the intervention which is tested in five Iri...

Versão portuguesa de "A Practitioner Toolkit for the Inclusion of Parents and Students in School Self Evaluation and Planning Distributed Evaluation and Planning in Schools (DEAPS)" Este manual é o resultado de um projeto intitulado Making Meaning of Distributed Evaluation and Planning in Schools (DEAPS)/Dando Sentido à Avaliação e Planeamento Par...

Teachers are increasingly integrating ICT into formal education (McKnight et al. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 48(3), 194–211, 2016), helping to incorporate technologies in learning and teaching. However, an important expectation relating to ICT integration is that Initial Teacher Educators model their own practice as well as deve...

This handbook is an outcome of a project exploring culturally responsive assessment in schools. This handbook is based on literature surveys, surveys of second level school personnel, case studies of second level schools and the subsequent conceptual framework that drew the central themes and concepts for the project. Details can be found on www.ac...

Immigration has dramatically increased in recent years and meeting and satisfying the demands of a diverse multicultural classroom is taxing educators at all levels of the educational spectrum as well as across Europe and internationally. The effects can be particularly significant when assessment tests knowledge, competence and ability at a point...

This purpose of the training module is to enhance Initial Teacher Education students and all educators understanding and application of Culturally Responsive Assessment in an educational setting. The module has 24 hours of lectures, 20 hours of online activity, 70 hours of independent study and 11 hours of group work. The module focuses on the the...

The chapter establishes the rationale for the development of an online professional development course in designing culturally responsive assessment for faculty of the Institute of Education in Dublin City University. As the literature on which the course is based is from several countries, the course may be considered relevant for faculty in vario...

The chapter establishes the rationale for the development of an online professional development course in designing culturally responsive assessment for faculty of the Institute of Education in Dublin City University. As the literature on which the course is based is from several countries, the course may be considered relevant for faculty in vario...

The compendium featuring Action Based School Evaluation Research Projects that were facilitated by Dr.Patrick Shevlin and Dr Martin Brown comprises School Evaluation Case Studies of all school types (cross-phase primary and post-primary, controlled and maintained across the religious divide, and including integrated and shared education schools thr...

Purpose: The purpose of this research as part of an Erasmus+ funded project tilted Aiding Culturally Responsive Assessment in Schools (www.acras.eu) is to provide an exploratory analysis of survey responses related to culturally responsive assessment policies, professional development and practices that were administered to school principals in fou...

ÖZET Okul öz-değerlendirme (OÖD), tüm okul topluluğu için önemli bir iyileştirme mekanizması olarak hareket eden bir tür iç değerlendirmedir. OÖD’nin doğası gereği paydaşların katılımıyla yürütülmesi gerekmektedir. Ancak veliler ve öğrenciler gibi temel paydaşların bu sürece katılımının ve rollerinin yeterli düzeyde olmadığı görülmektedir. Bu neden...

This paper posits that almost all inspectorates are now following, if to varying degrees, a similar overarching ideology and methodology for school accountability and improvement. The first part of the paper provides an analysis of recent changes to school inspection policies across Frontiers. Using Ireland as a case example, the next part of the p...

This paper reports on research derived from a one-year study on the integration of ePortfolios in education using Ireland as a case example. Through a series of interviews with school principals, teachers and members of the support service of the Department of Education and Skills in Ireland, this research explores the opportunities and challenges...

Key Findings • Broadband connectivity for tutors and students differs greatly between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, impacting directly on teaching and learning; • Female tutors who lecture students in teacher training institutions in Ireland are more positively disposed to using ICT than their male counterparts; • The role of teache...

This paper reports on the second phase of an Erasmus + Project titled “Distributed Evaluation and Planning in European Schools (DEAPS)” which is seeking to explore mechanisms and supports for the inclusion of parents and students in school evaluation and planning processes in four European countries: Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, and Turkey. As coun...

The terminal examination of post-primary education in Ireland, the Leaving Certificate, is often criticised for the reliance on memory recall over higher order thinking skills in the assessment process. In order to examine the evidence base for these critiques, this article presents an empirical investigation of the intellectual skills and knowledg...

The purpose of this working paper is to investigate varying perspectives on the limitations of and practical realities of Stakeholder voice in education and from this, to describe the conditions necessary for stakeholder voice to be more usefully accepted and subsequently applied in schools. As a starting point, the paper deconstructs the often-con...

The concept of data-informed decision making (DIDM), a term used interchangeably with data-driven decision making (DDDM) and data-based decision making (DBDM), is relatively new to Irish education and the school planning process. This research sought to clarify what data principals use and how they use that information for school improvement consid...

This paper suggests that distributed leadership is a vital first step in making schools flexible enough to respond to new pressures. However, it is then argued that distributed leadership per se does not necessarily imply a commitment to a particular stance on issues of social justice, such as equality, but rather that this can only flow from leade...

Across Europe schools and other service providers increasingly operate in networks to provide inclusive education or develop and implement more localized school-to-school improvement models. As some education systems move towards more decentralized decision-making where multiple actors have an active role in steering and governing schools, the task...

The relationship between school inspection and school self-evaluation in Ireland has shifted from a largely theoretical one to that of a regulatory requirement where schools are mandated to engage with an externally devised process of self-evaluation. The conduct of self-evaluation in schools is quality assured by the inspectorate. It is not clear...

Accountability and educational improvement (series Editors , Melanie Ehren (IOE) and Professor Maag Merkei ) Changes to national education policy and discourses on the ways in which schools are expected to improve outcomes exert a profound influence on the work and practices of inspection agencies: These influences range from changes to what insp...

With an increasing emphasis on school self-evaluation as a mechanism for school improvement, many countries provide a range of supports to guide schools through the self-evaluation process. While models of support vary across jurisdictions, there are a number of common approaches that prevail, including the provision of an external specialist to su...