Arts partnerships involving teachers, artists and arts organizations continue to be popular as a means of delivering arts education. Acting as an intermediary between schools and artists, arts brokers can be crucial to the successful implementation of these partnerships. Characterized as individuals who can act as channels for innovative practice,…

Preparing young people to meet emerging contemporary challenges has become a global imperative. Over two decades, there has been a call for students' active participation in the life of school and society, and an important feature of this call is student-led research (SLR). However, this pedagogical and empowering call with many potential benefits…

Eighteen people from different countries sat in a circle of chairs in a room facing the Sea of Moyle, some having traveled far to reach Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, for a week of learning about skillful responses to conflict and living better together across differences. Addressing the group, which included the authors, was Colin Craig, founder…

Accommodation centres for those seeking asylum present particular contexts in which to facilitate music making. Contextual and systemic difficulties abound. An exploration of a music project within six asylum seeker centres in Ireland is presented with a focus on the experiences of the four facilitators involved. Data are presented from…

The aim of this study was to examine secondary school students' attitudes towards and experiences of a student-centred health-related fitness test battery. A total of 795 adolescents (403 boys, 50.7%; 392 girls, 49.3%) aged 13.2 years (±0.39) from 20 secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland participated in the study. Schools were stratified…

This case study investigates the pedagogical leadership role of the Adult Education Officer (AEO) in the area of Vocational Education and Training (VET) to meet the requirements of the Bruges Communiqué (2010). The study found that the AEOs interviewed are working to implement a confused system imported from other countries that has yet to be…

The aim of this study is to investigate whether Lego could be used as a tool for reflective practice with social care practitioners (SCPs) and student practitioners. This article outlines an action research study conducted in an institute of higher education in Ireland. Findings from this study suggest that Lego can be used to support student…

This article is a narrative résumé of a year-long collaborative critical inquiry into teaching methods with teachers of modern languages in Irish secondary schools. Putting myself, a cultural stranger and first-time qualitative researcher, at the core of this self-study, I discuss first the context and methodological framework of the study to…

A student-centred approach to learning encourages students to have more responsibility for their learning and is a process that relies heavily on professional confidence to "let-go" of traditional teaching responsibilities. This paper describes the introduction of a student-centred approach within one further education college in…

The present article describes the use of action learning by a group of 30 franchisees to organise themselves and work through a period of upheaval and uncertainty when their parent company faced liquidation. Written from the perspective of one of the franchisees who found herself adopting action learning principles to facilitate the group, it…

This article examines the training needs of educators working in the further education (FE), adult education, and Second Chance sectors in the Republic of Ireland. The research on which it is based was funded jointly by the European Union Leonardo da Vinci Programme and the Department of Education and Science of Ireland and took place from 1998 to…