Dr. Joanne Banks

This interdisciplinary project investigates how disability, migration background and socioeconomic inequality intersect to shape children"s experiences and outcomes in Ireland. Using quantitative data from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) longitudinal study, alongside qualitative interviews with children and families, the project will generate new insights to inform Irish policy and practice in education, disability rights and child and youth services. It contributes to Ireland"s commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Leading academics from Ireland and South Africa propose to explore the extent to which academia and policymakers share knowledge in inclusive education policy development. The project will involve a three-day visit by a researcher from the University of Cape Town and government official from the Western Cape Education Department, including a research/policy brokerage event with relevant stakeholders from the Global North-South. The network will disseminate its work through a publication, conference and policy brief for both countries. We envisage the project will lead to the development of a COALESCE application focusing on synergies between academic experts and policy-makers in education.

The purpose of this project is to empower teachers to develop pedagogical competencies for establishing effective and engaging learning experiences in a digital space, whether as part of a blended experience or wholly online. With the consortium partners from Ireland, Greece, Belgium, and Spain, representing a mixture of second-level teachers and education researchers, we will address the common aim of harnessing UDL to achieve 'an EU-wide common understanding of how to make distance, online & blended learning effective, inclusive & engaging' (a strategic priority of the EC Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027). The project will address two key areas: inclusion and digital pedagogical competencies, with the main target group being second-level teachers. The approach will be based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework (Cast.org), an inclusive approach to teaching and learning that offers all students an equal opportunity to fulfil their potential. This framework offers students different options for accessing, building and internalising learning. It guides teachers to provide multiple means for students to: a) engage with; b) represent; and c) action/express their learning. A key output of this project is to provide a digital overlay to the UDL framework to scaffold teachers' implementation of UDL principles in remote/blended contexts, such as during school closures. The other project outputs will flow from the development of this digital overlay, to provide further layers of supports for teachers to adopt digital learning principles of UDL. These include a self-evaluation tool for teachers to identify aspects of the digital UDL framework with which they require support; an associated learning model to support teachers' creation of digital, UDL activities that include a focus on key skills and competences; Open Educational Resources to scaffold implementation of the framework; and a professional development module which will focus on Area 5 of the DigCompEdu Framework: empowering learners through accessibility and inclusion, differentiation and personalisation. These tools will aim to support teachers and schools to develop inclusive strategies for the digital provision of teaching and learning in their own educational context, with an overarching goal of ensuring high levels of student engagement notwithstanding the mode of content delivery.

Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) is an independent State agency responsible for promoting quality and accountability in education and training services in Ireland. In March 2018, QQI published a Green Paper on Assessment of Learners and Learning in further education and training, higher education and training and English language education. The Green Paper set out a framework and context for discussing assessment issues with a view to provoking debate about what is being done and what can be improved. The Green Paper focussed on both summative and formative assessment by education providers who are quality assured by QQI. It presented issues of concern in assessment and highlighted a number of ideas about how these issues can be addressed. Between March and December 2018, QQI held a public consultation involving a series of focus groups and workshops in addition to a call for written submissions from a broad range of stakeholders working in the area of assessment. This research provides an analysis of this public consultation using the Green Paper as a framework.

This primary objective of this project is to capture teachers' experiences of online teaching and learning and student engagement during the current school closures. The key deliverable from this project is a policy brief on barriers, enablers and effective practices to the Working Group on Continuity of Learning in the Department of Education. Importantly, we are structuring the survey to ensure we capture differences across different school types and regions.