School of Education Fellows announced on Trinity Monday

Full details available here: https://www.tcd.ie/Secretary/FellowsScholars/fellowship/

Congratulations to our colleagues Joanne Banks, Damian Murchan and Noel Ó Murchadha on being announced as Fellows and Elizabeth Oldham being announced as Honorary Fellow.

Elizabeth Oldham (Professor)

Elizabeth Oldham read mathematics in Trinity; she was awarded Scholarship in 1963 and a Gold Medal in 1965. Following graduate study in London, she returned to Trinity to do the Higher Diploma in Education and (after teaching in school) to take a Master in Education degree. She then worked in the School of Education until 2010, with some part-time secondment to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. Semi-retired, she teaches and supervises projects in the School of Mathematics while continuing her research.

Elizabeth’s main research area is mathematics education. She has been involved especially with large-scale comparative studies of curriculum and achievement; this ongoing work informs many of her publications. She publishes also on teacher education, use of IT in education, and computing education. Her teaching encompassed mathematics education, mathematics, IT / computing, statistics, research methods, and supervising students’ research. She served on College committees and with student societies, and was a Tutor for 32 years.

Elizabeth has engaged with many academic and professional bodies. In 2016 she was made an Honorary Member of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe. The Educational Studies Association of Ireland and the Irish Mathematics Teachers’ Association recently gave her Lifetime Achievement awards.

Joanne Banks (Dr)

Dr Joanne Banks is a lecturer and researcher in inclusive education at the School of Education. She previously worked in education research at the Social Research Division of the Economic and Social Research Institute. She holds a B.A in Geography and Sociology from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A. and Ph.D. from University College Dublin. She is an internationally recognised field-leader in inclusive education, with 80+ peer-reviewed outputs, and academic advisory roles in Irish education policy development.

Dr Banks’ research interests are in the field of inclusive education and educational inequality. She has published widely on special and inclusive education policy and practice, school exclusion, and student diversity. She is the presenter and author of the Inclusion Dialogue podcast series and books: The Inclusion Dialogue: Debating issues, challenges and tensions with global experts and Conversations and Key Debates in Inclusive and Special Education: Global Insights from ‘The Inclusion Dialogue’.

Damian Murchan (Associate Professor)

Damian Murchan is an Associate Professor in Trinity’s School of Education and is Vice-President of the Association for Educational Assessment – Europe (AEA-Europe). His research spans educational assessment, educational reform, and professional development for teachers, with particular emphasis on evidence-informed policymaking. Projects relating to high-stakes secondary school examinations include how national assessment agencies can incorporate teachers’ grades into qualifications and how students who are unable to present for exams due to illness or bereavement can be accommodated. His research on digital assessment investigates how automated analysis of learners’ errors on tests can help teachers diagnose children’s strengths and weaknesses in primary mathematics and he explores the ethical implications of using data analytics drawn from computerised tests.

Professor Murchan engages with national education agencies on the design and implementation of assessment and examination systems. His work in North Macedonia and Kosovo provided blueprints for the national rollout of school-based assessment systems covering compulsory education. In Ireland he provided technical advice to support the post-marking adjustment of Leaving Certificate results since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Murchan is a graduate of Cornell University (Ph.D. and Master of Science) and St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra (Bachelor of Education). In 2019 he became a Fellow of AEA-Europe in recognition of his scholarly achievements and service to the field of educational assessment internationally. He was formerly a teacher and principal in primary schools. In Trinity he has held positions as Head of the School of Education and Head of the School of Creative Arts.

Noel Ó Murchadha (Professor)

Noel Ó Murchadha is an Associate Professor in Language Education in Trinity’s School of Education. He worked previously at University College Dublin, University of Toronto and University of Limerick. His research lies in Sociolinguistics. The focus of his work is on language policy and language education policy, where policy is defined as the complex of language practices, ideologies and management, enacted in both top-down and bottom-up ways. He investigates policy, particularly in the Irish language context, as a situated sociocultural process that shapes the ways humans experience language and their wider social worlds. While he has investigated language practices and management, he is concerned primarily with language ideologies, where ideologies are defined as morally and politically loaded representations of how language functions. He has published widely on ideologies relating to Irish, focusing on perceptions of linguistic variation, target language varieties and standardisation.

He is interested in the changing relationship between self and society in the late modern age and in the ways that these changes are negotiated through language.