Let's Talk About Sociology of Education Let's Talk About Sociology of Education

My guest in this, the final episode of the ‘Let’s Talk About Sociology of Education’ podcast is Professor Andrew Loxley from the School of Education in Trinity College, Dublin. Andrew is the Director for undergraduate programmes in School of Education and he is also the Director of the Doctor of Education programme in Trinity. Andrew is one of the many colleagues I work with in the School of Education and he was also my doctorate supervisor in TCD and a wonderful mentor to me over the past fifteen years. Andrew and I have taught on the Sociology of Education and Research Methods modules and we have also conducted and published research together over the past number of years. It was an honour and a privilege to interview him for this final episode of the podcast series.

In this episode we discuss the use of visual methods and techniques in Sociology of Education. Visual methods and techniques include the creation and use of both participant generated and researcher generated still images as data and analysis and interpretation of the data either as a stand-alone method or as part of a suite of research methods. This approach works particularly well within the Sociology of Education elements. Andrew has used this approach in much of his work to date and under his supervision was one of the many research instruments I also used in my own doctoral work. His title “Mucky Pictures, Visual Sociology” is ‘a nod to the idea of polysemicity’, “of muck of mud, of lack of clarity”, where the same thing has different meanings to different people in the same way that there are many different perspectives and lenses through which we can look to make sense of elements of Sociology of Education. Sometimes we may think that the use of still images presents something very clear to the reader or observer, when in fact still images are not clear at all and can be very messy and open to all sorts of ranges of different interpretations. Andrew mentions how Roland Barthes describes this as “a multiple of different possibilities” with both denotation (the literal description) and connotation (deeper and more nuanced narrative) within each still image that can ‘disrupt’ the doxa. 

He talks about how we may think that what is a fairly obvious image of the world of a classroom, the school corridor of a textbook of a classroom is just what we see and recognise as something familiar but that there is a “lot of unknown fierceness to when you start picking away and start sort of figuring out what the internal and external narratives of the images actually are”. Andrew believes that using visual techniques is useful and worthwhile as “elements of destabilising how we look at the world, but also in a sense of forcing us to look at the world in another way”, which in itself is a sociological approach of looking and interpreting through multiple lenses to make sense of what we first see (denotation) and through our interpretation understand the many connotations that lie beneath the surface. 

He describes how in the use of participant generated images, “or trying to persuade why participants should use visual techniques…you need to be very clear as a researcher, why you want to do it, and how you're going to do it, and what you're going to get out of it. And also, what you want your participants to do with it”. Using participant generated images also  involves a “huge amount of preparatory work that you need to undertake”. Andrew mentions how this approach really draws on the idea of collaboration from a research perspective, and “it also transfers or hands over a lot of control of the data generation process to your participants.” From a research perspective this empowers participants and gives them an authentic voice in the generation of the data. 

He also refers to visual autoethnography from a Sociology of Education perspective and he describes how during Covid he has “been documenting my sort of l

My guest in this episode is Dr. Rose Dolan, Associate Professor and Teacher Educator in the Department of Education in Maynooth University. Rose led the postgraduate initial teacher education programme from 2003 to 2016 in Maynooth University and is currently the programme leader of the Doctor of Education programme in and she also leads the the Teacher Education strands on the M.Ed and the Doctorate. Rose is a qualified Science, Biology and Mathematics teacher and she also worked in the Youth Services prior to becoming a teacher.


In this episode of this podcast series Rose gives a nod to a song by Madness in her title “One Step Beyond: Sociology and the three capitals”. She recalls how the song (One Step Beyond) has very few lyrics and a lot of music and the reason she chose to include it in her title was because it reminded her of the idea of taking a step, a ‘giant step or a small step’ in thinking about structural and sociological issues that can seem so big and sometimes even huge. Rose talks about taking and going one step almost beyond ourselves to further and inform our understanding and our thinking about the world and the teaching profession. 


We also discuss the sociological concept of capital and the many forms it takes, including economic, cultural, social and institutionalised capital also referred to as Bourdieu’s theories. Rose mentions how Bourdieu talked about capital as “presenting itself in three fundamental guises economic capital, which is immediately and directly convertible into money, and maybe institutionalised in the form of property, cultural, which is convertible into economic capital, and may be institutionalised in the form of educational qualifications, and social capital, which are social obligations, or connections, convertible in certain conditions into economic and maybe also institutionalised in the form of what he talked about title of nobility, (which I don't think we'd talk about it that same way today)”.


We also discuss the Lyons et al Inside Classrooms study (2003), which Rose worked on, the ESRI Post-primary Longitudinal study, Professor Emer Smyth’s work in the ESRI, Brookfield lenses, the importance of parents in educational outcomes of their children and the privilege that teachers have in a classroom space. We discuss the challenges for parents and for teachers in supporting students to progress through the system. Rose mentions how it is important that as educators that we should look for “what is good within our young people”. And that we don't demonise them and we don't present images of them that that are hurtful for them to hear about themselves” or for them to see. “So I think within those ideas of justice and fairness, we need to be careful in the things that we say. And we need to, to be conscious of the words that are used and, and the actions that are taken that are interpreted and sometimes misinterpreted by those students that we work with.”


We also discuss the challenges for student teachers in terms of capital and for those who want to become teachers but who may lack the means or the economic, cultural or institutional capital to do so and how this impacts on the overall diversity of the profession. Rose talks about how “if the cultural systems, or the culture of schools is so far, or is a distance removed from the culture of particular teachers, do they feel at home? Do they feel at home and feel steady and feel that they belong? And that's a much deeper issue that we need to think about, and that we need to talk about.” We also discuss the benefits of the extended programmes of Initial Teacher Education in Ireland and in particular the benefit of the extended School Placement or practicum and the fact that students undertake placement in at least two different settings and how this has enhanced outcomes for student teachers and also for the teaching profession overall. 


We discuss Covid and the impact of Covid on us as

My guests in this episode are Dr. Kathryn Will, Assistant Professor of Literacy education in the University of Maine, Farmington in the USA and Dr. Robin D. Johnston, who is Associate Professor and field based experience coordinator, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, USA. I was very fortunate to meet both Kathryn and Robin a couple of years ago at the Clinical Fellows symposium in the States at the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE)  in Atlanta in 2019 and again in Atlantic City in February 2020. Clinical Fellows started in 2015 with the Association of Teacher Educators in the United States and the purpose of it was to really focus on the value of clinical experiences to support the way professors within teacher education and administrators approach clinical practice/ school practicum. Clinical Fellows offers practitioners an opportunity to meet and make connections, network and share experiences. For me it was one of the most energising experiences I have ever had and wasn’t like a conference at all because it was wholly participative in nature and participant led and focused.  It's all about facilitation “is not a sit and get opportunity, but instead, it is inquiry. It is the use of protocols, equity of voice in conversations and it's just incredibly generative in nature”. I was really pleased to have the opportunity to interview both Kathryn and Robin for the podcast and to discuss teacher education and teacher preparation with them.


In the podcast we focus on Clinical Practice in teacher education in the US and the importance of social and emotional learning for teachers, both practising and pre-service. They mention the importance of communities and how “it's not just about the academic content. It's not about just preparing the future teachers to consider what are the standards, how do we use curriculum or how do we plan instructional practices, but instead, it's about the community, the community within the classroom, the community within the school, the community within a larger area, town, city, whatever it might be”. Kathryn mentions how we all have to come back to ourselves first as teacher educators, and who we are, what our positionality is and “how who we are impacts what we do”. She also says that “if you talk to teachers, they know that social emotional learning is the absolute key to what we do, you cannot ask a child to do Math if their needs have not been met”. She talks about how she designed a course in her teacher education programme in the last year, called social emotional learning which was framed around the Casel framework. The Casel ‘five’ as they're known, are self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making relationship skills and social awareness. “It's all about taking ownership of yourself so that you can then expand out and grow, they build upon one another, my greatest learning in the last year, was just how much the future teachers needed to think about this for themselves before we could actually talk about what it was going to look like in the classroom, that became very apparent”.


Robin talks about trans-literacy which is one of her research interests. This stemmed originally from the writing she does as sustainable professional development. About six years ago, she came upon the term of ‘trans-literacy’ which she defines as the fluidity of movement across a range of textbook technologies medias and contacts, which six years ago didn't mean as much even as it does today. She goes on to describe how;
“And part of my oral language development course was, of course, the difference between academic language, formal language, and casual, you know, informal language and how our schools have this formal language, you know, kind of the school rules, versus our home has an playground and friend experiences have this more, you know, casual language, and understanding how to help students bridge the two, because trans-literacy is really def

My guest in this episode is Professor A. Lin Goodwin. Professor Goodwin is Dean of the Faculty of Education in the University of Hong Kong and was previously the Evenden Professor of Education in Teachers College, Columbia. She is a renowned teacher education expert globally and has researched and published broadly on many aspects of teacher education and related topics. Lin’s research interests include teacher and teacher education, beliefs, identities and development, equitable education and powerful teaching for immigrant and minorities, youth, international analysis, comparisons of teacher education practice and policy on the particular issues facing Asian and Asian American teachers and students in US schools. I was very fortunate to have met and worked with Lin as part of the DEEPEN project ( Droichead: Exploring and Eliciting Perspectives, Experiences and Narratives) where she was a member of the international research advisory team that guided and supported the empirical work of the project that explored teachers’ lived experiences of the Droichead professional induction process in Ireland for newly qualified teachers. Lin has been inspirational in her work in teacher education and with newly qualified teachers and is an incredible mentor to students, newly qualified teachers and to teacher educators and researchers in the field of teacher education everywhere. It was a great honour for me to work with her on the DEEPEN project and also a great honour to have the opportunity to interview her for this podcast episode. 


In this episode Lin describes how her pathway into education started in the classroom but somewhat surprisingly that she “was not a person who always wanted to be a teacher, I do not come from a family of teachers”. She says that despite getting accepted on her choice course in the National University of Singapore that her mother had other ideas as she “always had a dream, to go away, she never went to University, she always had a dream for her children to go to university, and to go to university away from Singapore. So we had relatives in the US, and that is where I ended up.. ”. Her mother was quick to dismiss her efforts at writing poetry once she got to the US, something that Lin enjoyed and advised her that she thought that Lin “should think about teaching, because you've always been good with children. And, you know, it's nice steady work, you know, that sort of thing. And I think I was just tired. And I gave in, and probably was the best decision of my life.” 


Lin is a certified teacher both at both special education and general education and she describes education as being “an area of great creativity. It's an area of social justice, everything that you do, has an impact on society and on the future. So it is incredibly important work at the same time that it's incredibly difficult..”.


Lin’s choice of title for her podcast episode (Beliefs, Diversity and Social Justice for New Teachers) was driven by the fact that for her “it really sits at the very heart of my work and my research. It was where I started my own research journey.” She remembers how during her undergraduate research work she “ kept coming up against this notion of beliefs. And the fact that, first of all, at that time, it was an understudied area. Now, it's an area that's, you know, quite substantively researched. But at that time, it was a very, very new idea that as teachers or as human beings, we come into any situation with a variety of beliefs and assumptions, and those come from our families, from our upbringing, from our experiences, none of us escapes them. So it's, it's human nature to come, [you know], with some, sort of internal, sometimes unconscious ideas about how things work.” She describes her research study and how she learned that it is not possible to be belief or value free. So that's one thing we need to sort of put aside, it is not possible to be completely neutral, t

My guest in this episode is Ms. Chrisdina O’Neill. Chrisdina is a Newly Qualified Teacher, a graduate of the Professional Master of Education (PME) initial teacher education (ITE) programme in the School of Education, University College Cork and she is very proud of her identity as a member of the Travelling community. Chrisdina has been teaching as a newly qualified teacher in her induction year in Doncaster in England. Chrisdina also completed her undergraduate degree in University College Cork, graduating with a honours degree in English and History. She has a very special affinity with University College Cork and in particular with the UCC Access Team and Chrisdina hopes to return to UCC at some point to complete a PhD in Education. Chrisdina recently featured on the RTÉ/IUA My University Life Television documentary where she described her experiences of becoming a teacher, battling stereo-types , breaking down barriers and stigma around university within marginalised communities and pursuing her dream to become a teacher.


In this episode we discuss Chrisdina’s pathway through education from her primary and post-primary school experiences, the influence of her family and her parents on her engagement with education and how as a member of the Travelling community that there were expectations that she would not remain in education but would instead leave school after Junior Cert because within the Travelling community “ we were kind of expected to be housewives and get married, have kids everything..” and arising from this expectation Chrisdina was “all geared up on leaving [after] Junior cert, this will be great.. “[leaving after Junior Cert]. However when Chrisdina started first year in post primary school she really liked it and “found I absolutely loved education, had wonderful teachers.. Because they were there for me. They helped me. They helped me fall in love with learning, especially with History and English, which are my two subjects now that I teach. I just found that this was where I was meant to be. And I really had those teachers push me along”.


Chrisdina attributes her strong work ethic to her mother and describes her as a very hard working lady, “I can honestly say my Mam was my inspiration. And she might have gone to university. But by God, I got my work ethic from her. So I always saw her going out working hard and earning enough to support our family, and my Dad as well”. 


Having completed her Junior Cert she recalls how she had “an awful battle to stay in school, had teachers called the house, made sure that I was coming back went into fifth year, and then University came off the idea”. “Of course they'd (her parents) known that I was gonna be a problem from the start when I stayed on school. So that conversation came up. And it lasted definitely for about six months. In my Leaving Cert year, going back and forth, “you're not going I am going you're not going””. She recounts how it really was a huge challenge “trying to get around them to let me go to University”, because for them it was something
very new. She says that her parents’ idea was that “they thought to be happy, you get your own money, and you can get what you want”. She says that none of her family had ever gone to University because “it's not for the likes of my family”.
Chrisdina talks about how because she attended a DEIS school that was linked to UCC that she was fortunate to secure a place on an Easter taster programme that afforded her an opportunity to experience College life, attend lectures and sample the University experience. She recalls how when she “walked onto the Quad and I just looked out, saw the West Wing building, and I was just like, Well, you know, who would have thought that I would get to even like experience Easter school in this place. And it was just at that moment that I knew that like, I need to go here. Like I need, to I need to be here. And then I went ba

My guest in this episode is Mr. Alex Murphy. Alex is a Newly Qualified Teacher and a graduate of the Professional Master of Education (PME) initial teacher education (ITE) programme in the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin Alex has been teaching as a newly qualified teacher in his Induction Year in an Educate Together post-primary school in Dublin. His PME research was supervised by Dr. Erika Piazzoli and focused on an examination of the role of the body in a second language classroom. Alex has published his ITE research work recently in the Student Teacher Educational Research (STER) peer reviewed e-journal.


In this episode we discuss the transition from being a student teacher to becoming a newly qualified teacher and how what student teachers learn in their teacher preparation programmes is relevant and does reveal itself in even greater detail as a newly qualified teacher. He mentions that the transition from the initial teacher education phase to the induction phase is welcome and something that student teachers look forward to but that that it can be an abrupt transition. Alex says that “you're not going to be the student teacher forever. And eventually, you are going to be the teacher that gets to see these, these social, sociological theories come to life in the classroom”. He advises “that there isn’t any middle ground between being a student [and] becoming a teacher for PME students” and, that” the transition happens almost kind of overnight, as you move from pretty minimal responsibility to do a full contract in a matter of months, you know, in April, May, you're finishing off your thesis and then when it hits August, September, you’re responsible for full classes, so the jump is quite big”. He also mentions how when student-teachers complete their initial teacher education, that “you realise the kind of wealth of knowledge and experience it's actually out there in the field”.


Alex describes how when he started as a newly qualified teacher that there were a lot of new staff, including newly qualified teachers in his school who all started at the same time. He says that he had wonderful in-school support during the pandemic when all other supports were online. He says that “just being able to go to someone and say, do you have any idea what's going on?Because I'm not entirely sure, either. And having that reassurance that everyone struggles in the beginning, but we got there, you know, we’ve made it through the year”.


Alex identifies a number of significant changes from his role as a student teacher to his role as a newly qualified teacher and “how you're no longer in the space that appears to supervise the class, but you're very much a member of staff and have a responsibility within the school”. This has been challenging for him and other newly qualified teachers but that he really enjoys “the independence that comes with this, and the freedom to teach the way you want to teach”. He reminds PME students that “you will eventually get to decide how you want to do things in your classroom. So we can be collaborative, but it should be on a teacher's terms as to how much they want to collaborate and how much collaboration they're comfortable with, because everyone has their own way of doing things”. He talks about teacher autonomy and how having the final say in what happens in his lessons is really important and “that sense of autonomy boosts your
self-confidence and allows you to make assured and informed decision” and you know that by the end of your Induction year, that “you're able to stand on your own two feet, and you're able to stand over decisions that you've made”.


We discuss a number of different Sociology of Education concepts including; teacher identity and NQTs forming a teacher identity, the family and the school, school culture, family culture, cultural capital, curriculum, language and the pedagogy of teaching a language, additional curr