Maintaining deep roots. The transformative possibilities of adult literacy education

This article explores on the formative influence of adult popular education in the evolution and continued ethos of adult literacy education in the Republic of Ireland. Freire’s work has been influential within Irish adult education and community development, informed by Freirean practices of learner-centredness, experiential learning and group learning. This stands in contrast to Further Education and Training system in which the adult literacy services are based, which has become increasingly professionalised in recent years, susceptible to the ideological values and practices of performativity. The article analyses the findings of research reports on adult literacy which used a mixed methods approach. They reveal how the adult literacy sector holds important spaces for educators to counteract systemic pressures of performativity as they work with learners and their communities through the ethos and pedagogies of adult education, but this is constrained in its radical transformative possibilities. (DIPF/Orig.

The Educational Character of Public Service Broadcasting: from cultural enrichment to knowledge society

A gradual erosion of the general principles of public service broadcasting has left a system increasingly susceptible to economic and political interests in the neoliberal marketplace. Education has a vital, but often overlooked, role to play in the maintenance of public communication as this casestudy of Irish broadcasting reveals. Education is located on the cusp of tensions between the social and political objectives of public service broadcasting and the economic reality in which it finds itself operating. Documentary and qualitative interviews reveals how education seeks to resolve these tensions, and the ambivalent consequences for public service broadcasting

The "Second Chance" Myth: Equality of Opportunity in Irish Adult Education Policies

This article explores the 'second chance' myth that surrounds the role of adult education in society. This myth apparently offers all citizens an equal chance to access educational opportunities to improve their life chances. I argue that recent developments in educational policy-making are increasingly shaped by neoliberal discourses that adapt adult education principles, such as lifelong learning and emancipation, for its own economic and political logic. This has important implications for adult education, especially equality of opportunity and social inclusio

The Role of Education in Irish Public Service Broadcasting

The media's contribution to the creation ofa healthy public sphere and civil society is the focus of public debate, especially in the light of concerns about the impact on them of the economic and political spheres. The media's ideal contribution to the development of a democratic society has traditionally been framed within the structures of the public service model of broadcasting, where education plays a crucial role. This article traces the evolution of education in Irish broadcasting, exploring the consequences for Irish democracy and civil life. It outlines how education's potential contribution has continually been shaped by the institutional demands of the political and economic systems, including the cultural nationalist ethos of early radio broadcasting, its role in the modernisation of Irish society, and the growth of commercialism and pluralist approaches. These trends had a formative influence on education's role in Irish broadcasting, and consequently on the civic and democratic lives of Irish citizens

The Role of Education in Irish Public Service Broadcasting

The media's contribution to the creation ofa healthy public sphere and civil society is the focus of public debate, especially in the light of concerns about the impact on them of the economic and political spheres. The media's ideal contribution to the development of a democratic society has traditionally been framed within the structures of the public service model of broadcasting, where education plays a crucial role. This article traces the evolution of education in Irish broadcasting, exploring the consequences for Irish democracy and civil life. It outlines how education's potential contribution has continually been shaped by the institutional demands of the political and economic systems, including the cultural nationalist ethos of early radio broadcasting, its role in the modernisation of Irish society, and the growth of commercialism and pluralist approaches. These trends had a formative influence on education's role in Irish broadcasting, and consequently on the civic and democratic lives of Irish citizens

Opportunities and Obstacles: how school leaders view development education in Irish post-primary schools

School leaders play a vital role in ensuring that schools attend to issues of local and global justice within the ethos and daily practices of their school community. This article examines the attitudes and activities of school leaders in relation to development education and their vision for its integration in schools based on a national survey of post-primary school leaders in the Republic of Ireland. We consider the conditions needed for development education to be successfully implemented and the drivers of change required that can sustain it in the longer term. We examine why some school leaders and communities seem to be disconnected from development education opportunities and unaware of available supports, whilst others engage actively with it as an organic part of their school culture. This has broader implications for resilience of school leadership, the teaching profession and school community, particularly in an era of constraint. It offers a unique insight into development education from the vantage point of those leading schools

Community Development: A Critical Approach (Second Edition) Margaret Ledwith (2011) Polity Press

  This second edition of Margaret Ledwith’s Community Development: A Critical Approach offers a critical and searching review of community activism and theory that is clearly positioned in the contemporary era of global economic, social and environmental crisis.   As Ira Shor notes in his foreword, Margaret Ledwith has a great capacity to ‘model the approach she recommends, wonderfully merging conceptual and practical matters in relation to community development’ (p.x).

Inclusion of Adult Literacy Support in Further Education and Training in Ireland: A Research Report

Adult Literacy Organisers (ALOs) take rightful pride in the work they do. They manage local adult literacy services across the country. They liaise with other statutory bodies, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), community groups and with individual people who come to them looking to improve their literacy, numeracy and/or digital literacy. ALOs offer literacy classes in a wide variety of settings including, family resource centres, community hubs, libraries, addiction rehabilitation centres, homeless support services, disability services, Health Service Executive (HSE) buildings, Tusla, Traveller advocacy centres and in their own ETB centres. In all of the work that they do, they hold central the learners’ needs, within competing policy and institutional demands. In addition, they work with colleagues across Further Education and Training (FET) contexts to support learners on FET programmes including Post-Leaving Cert (PLC) programmes, apprenticeship courses, Back to Education Initiative (BTEI), English for Speakers of Other Languages courses (ESOL), and Vocation Training Opportunities Schemes (VTOS). That collaborative, supportive work across FET, currently not universally understood, is the subject of this research. In June 2021, the Adult Literacy Organisers’ Association (ALOA) commissioned Dr Bernie Grummell of Maynooth University to conduct the research. We created a research advisory team comprising four ALOs and two tutors representing all six ALOA regions. It was important to ALOA that there should be a tutor perspective advising the research, as they do much of the frontline work with learners. In the report, we hear the experiences, frustrations and recommendations of our colleagues across FET at various levels of management, from ALOs to FET Directors as well as tutors, teachers and instructors. The Adult Education Guidance Service is also represented. We hope that these voices will help us to better understand the work that we do. All of our FET colleagues who gave of their time did so in the first term of the academic year, when that particular commodity is in short supply. For that we are profoundly grateful. This report is the first nationwide study of the supports offered by Adult Literacy Services to learners and colleagues in other areas of FET provision. It considers that support work in its policy and legislative contexts, and interacts extensively with the both national and international scholarship in the field. ALOA hopes that this report and its recommendations will come to represent the beginning of an important conversation among FET staff about the existing valuable collaborations we have. We also hope that this research will enable us to improve upon our endeavours to afford FET learners the best teaching and learning experience we can offer, by ensuring that unmet literacy needs are met at all stages of learning

WorldWise Global Schools: Baseline Research Consultancy

This report documents research conducted with principals and deputy principals of Irish Post-Primary schools and NGOs in Spring 2013 to explore the experiences and opinions about development education from the perspective of schools. We map the current development education activities and networks evident in the participating Irish post-primary schools and identify the key obstacles, opportunities and supports for development education, before discussing the broader implications for the sector. We highlight how institutional and cultural levels of support are key to ensuring that development education becomes an ‘organic…part of the culture of the school’. Other approaches to development education include an individualised model that tends to dilute power and focus on the commitment of individual teachers and students. The cross-curricular nature of development education poses particular challenges and opportunities in the current structure of the post-primary curriculum, examinations system, ownership structures, broader educational system and society. This research provides strategic insights about where extensive and intensive development education integration in schools is happening and where it is less visible or struggling for visibility. We explore the conditions for development education integration to successfully occur and the drivers of change required to enable it to be sustained in the longer term

Learning to live with it: reflections on surviving critical times from Irish adult education

An announcement was made by the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar TD on the morning of 12th March 2020 that educational institutions would close from 6pm that evening, to support efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19 (DES, 2020). As in other parts of the world, this was followed over the coming weeks by closure of most sectors of Irish society in "unprecedented actions to respond to an unprecedented emergency” (Doyle, 2020). These are indeed ‘critical times’ as the title states in more than one sense. Critical for population health in the short and medium term certainly, but also critical for us as adult educators in how we manage our being and doing as we transition from proximity to remoteness and distance. We hope this paper, based on student evaluations and tutor feedback, captures some of our shared experiences and reflections about living with uncertainty, learning in uncertainty and finding hope in emerging possibilities