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Category: Stranmillis News

Lough Road Learning Centre students coding for success

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Six students from Lough Road Learning Centre in Lurgan visited Stranmillis University College on Monday 11 April, to be awarded Certificates for completing a course in HTML web design and coding using the Go Berserk resources created by Stranmillis lecturer Ian Simons. The course was delivered as part of a joint initiative between Stranmillis and St Mary’s University Colleges.

Mikey Connors, Daryl Hearne, Christopher Adams, Caleb Myers, Caidon Canning, and Andrew Fan, were invited along with 3 teachers to the special event.

The Certificates were awarded to the students by Stranmillis Principal and CEO Prof. Jonathan Heggarty MBE, and St Mary’s Principal, Prof. Peter Finn KSG, CORE Systems CEO Patricia O’Hagan MBE, along with Ian Simons and Stranmillis student Jack Cassidy, who delivered the training at the Centre.

Lough Road Learning Centre provides education for young people who are unable to manage in mainstream school.

Congratulating the students, St Mary’s Principal Prof. Peter Finn KSG said, “ I am delighted to be part of this collaborative initiative with Stranmillis University College and the Lough Road Centre. Earlier in the year I observed at first hand how effective the Go Berserk resources are in teaching HTML web design and coding when Ian Simons took a course for students at St Mary’s. Congratulations to the six students from Lurgan on completing the course and receiving their certificates.”

Commenting on the joint initiative, Prof. Jonathan Heggarty said: “Partnerships like the one with Lough Road Learning Centre are vital if we are support, inspire and encourage all of our young people to maximise their potential and promote progression in education for all. Coding is a hugely important skill that is, and will continue to be, critical to the Northern Ireland economy. Our hope is that through collaborative and innovative initiatives such as this, that the young people involved may be inspired to pursue future study and indeed a career in the exciting and rewarding field of technology.”

Stran-led project will set the CRiTERiA for cultural responsivity in teacher education

Posted on by Andrew McAteer
Dr Patricia Eaton

Dr Patricia Eaton, Stranmillis University College’s Director of Teaching and Learning, has been granted a major funding award to lead a North-South project that will work with teacher educators and student teachers to design and develop an Open Access Online course to enhance culturally responsive educational skills and competencies.

The CRiTERiA project, which stands for ‘Cultural Responsivity in Teacher Education: Research in Action’, was awarded funding after a successful bid under a call for research issued by the Shared Island unit under the Department of the Taoiseach and the Standing Conference in Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS).

Dr Eaton will lead the project with Dr Martin Brown and Dr Paddy Shevlin from Dublin City University, Dr Manuela Heinz from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Prof. Joanne Hughes at Queen’s University Belfast.

Welcoming the award, Dr Eaton said “This is a significant project that aims to deconstruct the challenges and opportunities for the preparation of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students to teach in culturally diverse environments and will lead to the enhanced inclusion of students with a migration background across the continuum of education”.

Dr Eaton’s Stranmillis colleagues Dr Sharon Jones and Dr Lisa McKenzie will also contribute to the project.

The course developed will be open to teachers of all levels of experience, including student teachers, and the project team will publish their report in September 2023.

Read more about this and the other Shared Island SCoTENS projects recently announced here.

Education Workshop goes ‘Beyond the Stereotype’

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

A lively discussion involving around 50 representatives from churches, schools and a range of other key organisations with a role in education took place in Portadown, on Friday (25th March) with a view to helping our children and young people to reach their full potential.

The workshop at Seagoe Parish Centre was hosted by the Transferor Representatives’ Council (TRC) – representing the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Church and Methodist Church in relation to education in Northern Ireland – and focused on a new research report from Stranmillis University College, Beyond the Stereotype: Approaches to Educational Under(Achievement) in the Controlled Sector in Northern Ireland.

The study, which was commissioned and funded by the TRC, aims to go ‘beyond the stereotype’ of the well-documented challenge of underachievement among Protestant working-class boys from disadvantaged inner-city communities, and to ‘cast the net wider’ to provide a broader and more representative picture.  Particular challenges in rural communities, which have not been reported extensively to date in previous studies, are identified with some school leaders speaking of the difficulty in motivating boys to work hard towards GCSEs.

Significantly, Beyond the Stereotype also finds that while pupils view educational achievement as largely related to success in external exams (such as GCSEs and A-levels), many school and community leaders (including employers) place greater value on a wider range of skills and abilities, and pupils’ mental and physical health, self-confidence, happiness and willingness to learn.

Dr Noel Purdy, who led the research through Stranmillis’ Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement, said: “We’ve certainly identified lots of challenges – there are big challenges facing controlled schools and indeed every school in Northern Ireland – but what we did see was a diverse, committed, community-orientated and innovative sector which is committed to maximising achievement for all children.  In other words, allowing all the children in schools to stand tall and achieve to their full potential.”

The TRC represents its member churches in all matters of education in the region, and oversees the appointment of over 1,500 governors to controlled schools.  The three churches transferred (hence the origin of transferors) their school buildings, pupils and staff into state control on the understanding that the Christian ethos of these schools would be maintained.

You can find out more about the TRC through its website at www.trc-churcheducation.org.  More information on the work of the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement (CREU) can be found at www.stran.ac.uk/research/creu

 

SCoTENS award for Diane McClelland

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Stranmillis University College researcher and lecturer Diane McClelland has received a research award from the Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South (SCoTENS), in conjunction with Maynooth University’s Dr Leah O’Toole.

Both led research teams from each institution in a cross-border collaborative project entitled Contested Childhoods Across Borders and Boundaries. The research examined how ideas of children and childhood shaped education in the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland following partition in 1921.

The project was named joint winner of the John Coolahan Award 2022, for projects considered to be most in line with the values and ideals SCoTENS.

The research teams received their award on an online event on 15 March 2022. Diane was presented with her certificate in person from Stranmillis University College Principal Professor Jonathan Heggarty, and the Director of Research & Scholarship and the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement (CREU), Dr Noel Purdy.

The final report and journal publication can be downloaded here.

 

CREU’s Dr Noel Purdy appointed as Chair of Irish Government’s Anti-Bullying Action Plan Steering Committee

Posted on by Andrew McAteer
Dr Noel Purdy (right) appointed as Chair of Irish Government anti-bullying action plan steering committee.

Dr Noel Purdy, the Director of Stranmillis University College’s Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement (CREU), has been appointed as Chair of the Irish Government’s Steering Committee to review its 2013 Action Plan on Bullying.

The Steering Committee met for the first time today at the Department of Education in Dublin, where the review was launched by the Irish Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD. It is intended that the review will take account of developments and relevant research since the 2013 Action Plan, considering areas such as cyber-bullying, gender-based bullying and sexual harassment.  The Steering Committee will comprise senior Department of Education officials, external experts and representatives of advocacy organisations.

Speaking of his appointment, Dr Noel Purdy said “I am very honoured that Minister Foley has invited me to chair this important review of the 2013 Action Plan on Bullying.  I look forward to working with colleagues in the south over the coming months to ensure that the revised Action Plan serves as a research-informed blue print to protect all children and young people from all forms of bullying.”

Dr Purdy is a longstanding member and former chair of the Northern Ireland Anti-Bullying Forum and has led a number of significant research projects on bullying, including cross-border studies on bullying and special educational needs, and a recent five-nation European project on cyberbullying among young people, the Blurred Lives Project.  He recently chaired the Expert Panel for Educational Underachievement in Northern Ireland whose final report and action plan A Fair Start was published on 1 June 2021.

To find out more about the Steering Committee, read the Department of Education’s press release here.

Ministers and MLAs sign The Daily Mile Nation Pledge

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Since the launch of the Daily Mile Northern Ireland, Stranmillis has been a major supporter of The Daily Mile, which aims to encourage children to run, jog, wheel or walk at their own pace for one mile every day to improve their physical, social, emotional and mental health. Stranmillis lecturers Dr Brenda McKay Redmond and Dr Barbara McConnell are the co-chairs of The Daily Mile Network NI and, to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, they were delighted to host a special Daily Mile event at Stormont today to encourage NI Assembly Ministers and MLAs to sign a pledge to make Northern Ireland a Daily Mile Nation.

Founder of The Daily Mile, Elaine Wyllie MBE, and Lady Mary Peters were joined by children from schools, including Tor Bank School, Longstone School, Dundonald High School, Ballybeen Preschool, Cregagh Primary School, St Teresa’s Nursery School, ABC PIP Walkie Talkie group and Mount St Michael’s Primary School, and  Daily Mile Network NI members, to walk their daily mile.

At the end of their walk up Prince of Wales Avenue to Parliament Buildings, they met Ministers Nichola Mallon, Edwin Poots and Robin Swann, as well as members of the Education Committee and other MLAs, to discuss making Northern Ireland a Daily Mile Nation and sign The Daily Mile Nation pledge.

For more pictures from today’s The Daily Mile event, visit our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/stranbelfast/