First Graduates from Doctorate in Education (EdD) in St Patrick's College

In November 2009 Doctorates were conferred on the first cohort of  the new Doctoral programme (EdD) in St Patrick’s College.  The thirteen graduates are drawn from key leadership roles in education as well as innovative practitioners.  This new programme was designed to meet the needs of the system and provide expertise at the highest level, particularly in relation to educational disadvantage, leadership and special needs.  Speaking at the graduation, the President of St Patrick’s College, Dr Pauric Travers said that conferring of the first graduates from this programme  marked a significant landmark  in the professional development of Irish teachers.

A central part of the course were seminars conducted by world renowned scholars including Professor Marilyn Cochran Smith of Boston College and Professor James Spillane one of foremost authorities on leadership in education. 

Those conferred and their thesis topics were as follows: 

• Marian Farrelly: Care and Performativity: Walking the Tightrope – A Case Study of an Educationally Disadvantaged Setting
• Mags Jordan: Learning to be ‘Teacher’: A Case Study of Ten Beginning Primary Teachers in Schools in Designated Areas of Disadvantage
• Zita Lysaght: From Balkanisation to Boundary Crossing: Using a Teacher  Learning Community to Explore the Impact of Assessment on Teaching and Learning in a Disadvantaged School
• Colman Motherway: Enabling, Hearing and Giving Weight to Students’ Views of Special Schooling in 21st Century Ireland: Do ‘Dilemmas of Difference’ Apply?
• Michael O’Keefe: The rarely heard voice: Students with moderate general learning disability speak of their experiences in mainstream schools.
• Bairbre Tiernan: How Do Children with Reading Difficulties Learn to Read in First Class?
• Deirdre Farrell: Is Now and Ever Shall Be? Authentic Catholic Primary Education in Postmodern Ireland
• Niamh O’Brien: Irish Schools as Communities of Practice for Citizenship Education: The Experience of a Primary School
• Rory McDaid: Tears, Teachers, Tension and Transformation? Minority language children reflect on the recognition of their first languages in Irish Primary Schools
• Carol O’Sullivan: E Pluribus Unum? Maintaining Social Cohesion while Recognising Difference within Contemporary Irish Education
• Fintan McCuthcheon: One Year in the Rough Ground of Practice: Phronesis as a Mode of Educational Leadership in a Multicultural Primary School
• Margaret O’Donnell: Inclusive Education Policy: Teachers’ Efficacy Beliefs for Including Pupils with Special Educational Needs in Irish Mainstream Primary Schools
• Carmel O’Doherty: Teachers’ Lives within the Contexts of Policy, Change and Reform in Irish Primary Education

The College will shortly be advertising for the next cohort of students for the Doctorate in Education programme, which will commence in 2010.

Last Updated: Friday December 04 2009