Irish Journal of Education

A co-professional approach to inspection for accountability and improvement: Progress and prospects in the Irish context Harold Hislop Inspectorate, Department of Education and Skills, Dublin This paper examines developments in inspection and school self-evaluation in primary and post-primary schools in Ireland since 2010, and looks ahead to how aspects of these processes can be furtherRead more…

HOMEWORK AND STUDY BEHAVIOURS BEFORE THE LEAVING CERTIFICATE AMONG TRANSITION YEAR PARTICIPANTS AND NON-PARTICIPANTS Aidan Clerkin Educational Research Centre This article describes the self-reported homework and study behaviours of almost 5500 students from Third Year to Sixth Year in a representative sample of 20 Irish schools. In particular, the studying habits of Fifth Year andRead more…

LITERACY AND NUMERACY IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Gerry Shiel and Lorraine Gilleece Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College, Dublin Recent international assessments of educational achievement at primary, post-primary, and adult levels allow for comparisons of performance in reading literacy and numeracy/mathematics between Northern Ireland and the Republic ofRead more…

SATISFYING THE ‘LEARNING IN DEPTH’ CRITERION Kieran Egan Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University It has long been argued that being educated entails satisfying two criteria: first, one must know many things about the world and, second, one must know something in significant depth. There have been a number of proposals for attaining the depthRead more…

CLASS SIZE AND PUPIL-TEACHER RATIO: POLICY AND PROGRESS Susan Weir, Peter Archer, and Laura McAvinue Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College, Dublin Government policy relating to reduction in class size and pupil-teacher ratio over the past 50 years is outlined. Since the 1980s, the policy has focused on positive discrimination towards schools serving pupils inRead more…

AN OVERVIEW OF THE MAIN FINDINGS OF PISA 2003 IN IRELAND Gerry Shiel, Nick Sofroniou, and Judith Cosgrove Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College, Dublin In PISA 2003, 15-year olds in Ireland achieved a mean score on the major assessment domain, mathematics, that is not significantly different from the OECD country average. Irish mean scoresRead more…

THE POINTS SYSTEM AND GRADING OF THE LEAVING CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION Eoghan Mac Aogáin Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College, Dublin The study described in this paper examines official figures for the grades awarded in 20 subjects in the Leaving Certificate Examination (LCE) at Ordinary and Higher levels in the period 1996 to 2005. Eleven subjectsRead more…

TEACHING AND LEARNING IN MULTIGRADE CLASSROOMS: WHAT TEACHERS SAY Catherine Mulryan-Kyne St Patrick’s College, Dublin This paper presents the results of an exploratory study which examined the perceptions and beliefs of 75 teachers regarding four-grade multigrade classes in two-teacher schools. The study investigated the degree to which positive and negative perceptions of the multigrade settingRead more…

DECLINE IN THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS TAKING LEAVING CERTIFICATE ACCOUNTING: TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES Marann Byrne and Pauline Willis Dublin City University Business School Over the last decade there has been a sharp decrease in the number of students choosing to take Accounting in the Leaving Certificate Examination. In the study described in this paper, teachers’ viewsRead more…

Preface All the papers in this issue of The Irish Journal of Education use data which were collected in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000. PISA, a project of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and participating member countries, is an international assessment of the skills and knowledge of 15-yearRead more…