School of Education Studies Dublin City University /DCU/
www.dcu.ie
Involved people: Gerry McNamara, Joe O`Hara, Sean Griffin
About DCU:
The School of Education Studies, Dublin City University is part of the largest Education Faculty in the Republic of Ireland. The School currently has over 750 students at undergraduate and postgraduate level and provides courses in Educational Leadership, Initial Teacher Education and e-Learning. As providers of continuous professional development programmes for school leaders, it is of great importance to the School of Education Studies, DCU, to be at the cutting edge of new developments and initiatives in the field. We have found in the past that involvement in EU projects and other research initiatives is an excellent way of improving our knowledge and skills as academics and educators through interaction with colleagues in other countries and with school leaders from other systems and jurisdictions. In the case of this particular project, we wish not only to inform and improve the work that we are undertaking with our own postgraduate students, but also to network widely with school leaders through the society of management education in Ireland which is a key forum for developing new ideas and approaches in management education.
ROLE IN THE PROJECT
The researchers are specialists in a particular aspect of the modern leadership environment, namely the improvement of quality through evaluation and self evaluation. In the Irish context, the emergence of whole school evaluation in recent years has been predicated on the assumption that schools and in particular school leaders are capable of collecting and analysing evidence, both to manage change and to meet accountability requirements. In fact, our research shows that few school leaders and schools have the necessary methodological kompetence or mindset to develop evidence driven institutions. We are already working with a number of schools communities on systematic evaluation and self evaluation, and would like to further develop this work by cooperating with colleagues from other countries in researching and developing initiatives in this area which appears to be a common theme across the European Union. The researchers lead the DCU professional Doctorate in Educational Leadership and have a international reputation as researchers in the fields of educational evaluation and evidence based practice as a component of professional development.