The Research Webinar Series at Hibernia College launched this month with a presentation by Eleanor McSherry. Eleanor supervises research projects specialising in autism and lectures on the PME programme at Hibernia College.
Intellectual Disability in Irish Education
Eleanor is a well-known researcher and activist for the rights of special needs families and people with disabilities.
She has written and presented a considerable body of work within the national media related to disability, autism, arts and culture. She is a member of a number of research teams, including a research team for the National Disability Authority and the Autism Special Interest Group at the University of Limerick, as well as the Disability and Mental Health Cluster at University College Cork. In 2011, she co-founded the Special Needs Parents Association.
Eleanor presented her research study A Foucauldian discourse analysis of intellectual disability in Irish education and offered the opportunity for enquiry about her work and a discussion of her findings.
Research in the Contemporary Classroom
This presentation is part of a research webinar series for Hibernia College students and faculty that explores research in education-based topics. It draws on the rich experience of faculty, students engaged in research and alumni who have completed their research projects as a vital part of the PME programmes. By focusing on the field of education, it highlights the importance of research in the contemporary classroom.
Teacher Researchers as Agents of Change
In establishing the Research Webinar Series, Dr Kevin Myers Lecturer in Education (Research) states:
The relationship between research and teaching is frequently overlooked. Research is often seen as something rather insular and abstract — a framework of enquiry divorced from practitioner-based professions such as teaching.
This series seeks to move beyond such misconceptions and to present research as it is; a vital, scientific, evidence-based system of tools and resources, which directly informs our understandings of the world and our place within it.
Teachers, as agents of change, can see research-based skills as an invaluable resource in the development of their professional lives, made manifest directly within their future teaching practice.
