Centre for Planning Education and Research - Doctoral Theses

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    Pedagogy of the interior: awakening beauty through encounter
    (University College Cork, 0023) Moylan, Anne Marie; Hall, Kathy; Fleming, Domnall
    Leadership sustainability and professional development is the focus of this qualitative constructivist research. Reform of the leadership role is proposed through the new pedagogy of the interior, devised to effect intrinsic transformation and leadership actualisation. It is crucial that school leaders re-imagine an untenable role that has been expanding exponentially for decades in terms of task, responsibility, and complexity. The pedagogy awakens the beauty of a new way of thinking, being and learning, achieved through encounter from the inside-out and bottom-up personal and interpersonal layers of the school community. The research evaluates the progression and beneficence of an embodied pedagogy of the interior and interrogates the psychological barriers of perfectionism and hegemony that restrict growth and change. The scholarly personal narrative methodology (Nash, 2011) comprises a cathartic journey of subjective reflexivity, meaning-making, and renewal. It is a befitting and rigorous methodology for encounter with theory, research, and leadership experience. It affords scope for the supplementary epistemologies of self-study and action research employed to deepen learning. It employs reflexive thematic analysis and crystallisation techniques of analysis through the media of arts. It accounts for the roots and trajectory of an embodied pedagogy of the interior, an essential complementary component of the Irish Primary Principal’s Network (2022) sustainable leadership project. Research finds i) how existing knowledge, experience and skillsets for restorative practice and nonviolent communication (Rosenberg, 2015) form the bedrock for systemic habitual encountering, ii) how philosophy of encounter and disruption creates aptitude for complexity, iii) how psychoeducation and self-understanding demystifies unconscious beliefs and practices that hinder the awakening of beauty. In conclusion, the research reveals the pedagogy of the interior to be transformative and emancipatory. It cultivates a skillset for critical thinking and dialogue and illuminates the source of power. It reinstates inner peace, outer harmony, autonomy, and agency. It deserves a prominent place in professional development. I attest that the personification of the leadership dilemma is an academic gap and a portal to the reconfiguration of professional identity.
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    Towards a holistic understanding of student teachers becoming resilient on school placement
    (University College Cork, 2019) Nation, Una Evelyn; Chambers, Fiona Catherine; Kitching, Karl
    This research aims to contribute to our understanding of resilience and how it is negotiated and achieved by student teachers. The purpose of this research is to explore the lived experience of student teachers during their school placement. The fact that student teachers find teaching practice intense is well known. During the initial teacher education phase, the student teacher attempts to perform a coherent, unitary student teacher self that will be viewed favourably by pupils, colleagues, parents, and the tutor as a “good teacher” (MacDonald, 1996). This adds to the intensity of the teaching placement, which itself is underpinned by, constant surveillance. The multi-dimensional nature of resilience formed the basis of the conceptual framework, this was used to build on existing research, and in so doing, helped to clarify why and how resilience is formed, and how student teachers respond in the face of adversity. The conceptual framework goes beyond the basic interpretation of resilience which views resilience as the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity (Windle, 2010) and sees resilience as a complex and multi-dimensional, interrelated phenomenon. This framework offers a holistic view of resilience as involving (a) attachment and psychological strength (b) communities of practice and (c) negotiation of power relations. This interpretive research is located within the constructivist paradigm. This paradigm suited the study as it enabled the identification of factors that might not be exposed or described through the use of statistics, which offer generalisations of the student teacher population. Throughout one academic school year, qualitative data was collected using semi-structured interviews and reflections from six student teachers. The data was considered using an interpretivist framework that emerged from the voices of the participants. Arising from this research is the notion of the ongoing process of becoming resilient in student teaching as involving the development and negotiation of three key forms of self; namely, the relational self, coping self and monitored self. The negotiation of these forms of self-demonstrate that student teachers comply, resist and work around the demands of the placement. Performativity – or responding publicly to the multiple and at times alienating demands of placement is a means of conforming and in doing so, coping, for student teachers. The study supports the view that people cannot be simplistically reduced to being good or bad student teachers; rather they negotiate a range of selves and a range of challenges in the process of becoming resilient on school placement. Implications for policy, practice, and future research on student teacher practice on resilience are discussed.