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    Exploring the potential of digital teaching portfolios to support in/non-formal professional development for those who teach in Higher Education
    (Irish Learning Technology Association, 2021-06) Costelloe, Laura
    This paper will explore the potential of eportfolios –and specifically digital teaching or professional practice portfolios –to support, document and evidence the wealth of non-accredited and in/non-formal professional learning undertaken by HE teachers to enhance academic practice. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews carried out with Irish Higher Education(HE)teachers in three institutions in the Mid-West regionand using a qualitative methodology,this paper will consider how digital teaching portfolios offer a space for evidencing and reflecting on engagement in professional learning. Findings point to the recognition of the potential of eportfolios to facilitate the gathering of evidence, artefacts and reflections over an extended period time which can be used at a later stage for accreditation or promotion. Furthermore, participants reported the affordances of eportfolios to recognise the myriad of in-and non-formal professional learning that is undertaken by HE teachers, including experiential and practice-based learning. However, while welcoming the affordances of eportfolios to support engagement in professional learning activities in order to enhance academic practice, there was a perception among some participants that the creation of portfolios is a time-consuming task for which support would be required. Therefore, this study points to the need for a targeted and institutional approaches to support the practice and process of eportfolio development for HE teachers, particularly if a portfolio is tobemaximised as a tool of criticalreflection and learning to enhance academic practice.
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    Development of a shared vision for flexible inter-institutional professional development using the OOFAT Model
    (New Millennium Discoveries, 2020-07) Costelloe, Laura; Nerantzi, Chrissi; O'Brien, Emma; Reale, Jean; O'Sullivan, Íde
    Given the increasing pressure higher education institutions are facing, collaboration is key to increase capacity to address competing demands. The professional development (PD) of academic staff has been identified as one of the key priority areas in the modernisation of Higher Education to support them to cope with growing numbers, more diverse student groups and a dynamic environment. There is a need for a flexible approach to PD that leverages from formal and informal approaches to allow academic staff to upskill while practicing. Many Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) are collaborating in this area to exchange best practice and increase the PD activities they offer to their staff. However, each HEI has different strategies, cultures and institutional needs. To allow them to collaborate they need to develop a shared vision in the area of PD. This paper discusses the FLEXIpath project in which three HEIs are collaborating to extend their PD provision to enhance academic practice. It explores the role of a visual modelling approach, (specifically the OOFAT model), in facilitating the development of a shared roadmap for the provision of collaborative PD through negotiation and scaffolded discussion.
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    How young children played during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 in Ireland: findings from the Play and Learning in the Early Years (PLEY) Covid-19 study
    (Open Book Publishers, 2023-06) Egan, Suzanne M.; Pope, Jennifer; Beatty, Chloé; Hoyne, Clara
    The Covid-19 measures put in place by governments around the world to restrict the movement of people and limit the spread of the virus have also impacted on children’s play. The importance of play in children’s lives has been well documented and research shows that it plays a role in all aspects of development including physical, cognitive and socioemotional development (e.g. Ginsburg 2007: 182, Fisher et al. 2008: 306, Howard and McInnes 2013: 738). Different types of play have been classified, as have the different ways that children can learn and develop through play (e.g. Parten 1932: 249, Whitebread et al. 2012: 31). This chapter will examine some key findings on changes in young children’s play in an Irish context based on parental responses gathered during the first Covid-19 lockdown in spring 2020. The evidence on children’s play during the pandemic to date suggests that globally there have been a number of changes (e.g. Barron et al. 2021: 372; Moore et al. 2021: 4). New research is still emerging but it seems that commonalities across countries during lockdowns included increases in time spent on screens and on indoor play, and decreases in physical activity and outdoor play. A cross-country comparative study of children’s indoor play during the lockdown indicated many similar impacts on play behaviours and activities, irrespective of country, specific cultural factors or restrictions in place (Barron et al. 2021: 375). Children’s development and how they play does not operate in a vacuum as children are influenced by the world around them and often use play to make sense of their experiences (e.g. Hirsh-Pasek, Singer, and Golinkoff 2006: 39; Hayes, O’Toole, and Halpenny 2017: 88). According to an article on the World Economic Forum, ninetynine percent of the world’s children have lived with restrictions on movement and interactions because of Covid-19 (Fore and Hijazi 2020). The pandemic disrupted every aspect of children’s lives, including their health, development, learning and behaviour, their families’ economic security, their protection from violence and abuse, and their mental health. Recent research studies have also borne this out (e.g. Almeida et al. 2021: 413; Egan et al. 2021: 925; López-Aymes et al. 2021: 1, Thorell et al. 2021: 649; Thorn and Vincent-Lancrin 2022: 383). Under Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF 1989), children have the right to play, although this is often a neglected right (Shakel 2015: 48).
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    The influence of screen time and screen activity on socio-emotional development in 5-year-old children: findings from a nationally representative Irish cohort study
    (SAGE Publications, 2025-12-05) Chloé Beatty; Suzanne M. Egan
    The present research focuses on the influence of both screen time and various screen activities (television, video or educational games) on the socio-emotional development of 9001 Irish 5-year-old children using a nationally representative birth cohort study. Parents were asked about their children’s screen use and various family factors, while socio-emotional development was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression models examined the influence of screen use factors on externalised, internalised, and prosocial behaviour, while controlling for environment and family factors. Engaging in two or more hours of screen time per day had a small negative influence on all three of the socio-emotional scales. Mostly playing video games also related to increased internalised and externalised behaviour for this cohort. While the screen use variables made a significant contribution to the regression model, even after family factors were accounted for, the effect sizes were small in comparison. The results of this study suggest that screen time, activities, and wider ecological factors are all important to consider in future screen use research to provide a more nuanced understanding of screen time’s unique role in early development. The findings provide evidence-based guidelines for researchers, caregivers, educators, practitioners, and policymakers.
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    The development of computational thinking: a constructionist school computer programming initiative in a girls' primary school
    (2025-05) Carroll, Claire
    In September 2025, the newly established Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum was rolled out in primary schools across Ireland with the intent to provide opportunities for students to learn the fundamentals of programming and build on their computational thinking skills. To date, much of the research on the learning of programming and computational thinking has been conducted with older students or in informal settings. Therefore, this study was conducted in a primary school context to investigate if primary school students could develop their computational thinking through engaging in programming activities. Sixty-seven students from third, fifth and sixth classes in an Irish primary school took part in a ten-week Scratch programming initiative designed to foster their computational thinking. Various data collection methods were adopted to capture the multidimensional nature of computational thinking, including artefact analysis, artefact-based interviews, questionnaires and an observation diary. Brennan and Resnick’s (2012) three computational thinking dimensions (concepts, practices and perspectives) were used to interpret the data, before deductive and inductive analyses were adopted to conceptualise the nature of the dimensions. Findings indicate that the primary school students in this study excelled at both synchronisation and parallelism, with many students illustrating an understanding of more challenging concepts such as state synchronisation and parallel launching of multiple scripts. However, conditional loops and variable initialisation caused significant difficulty, with further analysis revealing that students would require further scaffolding to acquire these concepts. This research gave insights into the poorly defined computational practices and perspectives, providing teachers, researchers and policymakers with a more comprehensive picture of how these dimensions can manifest in a primary school classroom. In presenting thick descriptions of these students’ experience, this research also highlights pedagogical factors that shaped and supported their computational thinking development, including programming language, project type, level of scaffolding and peer engagement. Finally, a reconfigured computational thinking framework is proposed, identifying aspects of computational thinking that were not sufficiently captured by the Brennan and Resnick (2012) framework.