PME Year 2 Module Listings

Overview

This module has been designed to extend and deepen the knowledge, skills and competences developed by students through the school placement module in the first year of the Professional Master of Education. Opportunities are provided for the personal and professional growth of students to facilitate the development of professional dispositions essential to their work as primary school teachers. Students are prepared to participate fully in all aspects of the role of the teacher, competently and effectively. In their second year of the Professional Master of Education, students should continue with observations and reflections and will have increased responsibilities for planning and teaching to include a significant period when they will have total responsibility for the teaching and learning within the classroom. Students will also be expected to engage in an element of research on their placement. This will be assessed through their research dissertation.

Students will engage in a 10-week placement in semester 2. This block will include two teaching blocks, a SEN experience and a School-based Activities block.

The Teaching blocks are assessed under two areas :

• • Preparation for Teaching (Long Term Planning and Short Term Planning)
  • Teaching and Learning (Professional Values and Practice, Communication, Quality of Teaching, Children’s learning experience, Classroom management and organisation and Assessment of and Progression in learning)

Students’ Professional Portfolios will also form part of the assessment for School Placement. Examples of these reflections include reflections on their experience of planning, teaching and learning; their professional communications and their contribution to the school.

The school activities block will be assessed through the Professional portfolio and a post-placement interview. This assessment will be based on four key areas of skill and knowledge development: Professional Communication and Conversations, School Administration, Developing My Own Initiative and Contribution to my School Community. Students will be expected to demonstrate through their portfolios and at individual interviews how they have developed the four areas during the ten week block placement with specific reference to the three week school experience block.

Overview

Children’s literature has long been regarded as an essential instructional resource in the primary classroom and plays a powerful role in developing readers (Serafini, 2011; Allington, 2015). Teachers aiming to foster a love of reading in children and to facilitate meaningful engagement with literature must themselves have a strong knowledge of and enthusiasm for children’s literature. This course aims to extend students’ knowledge, understanding and appreciation of children’s literature, its historical, sociological and ideological dimensions, and to develop their ability to apply this knowledge to their utilisation of children’s literature in the primary classroom. Reading Teachers are teachers who read and readers who teach (Cremin 2014; Commeyras, Bisplinghoff and Olson, 2003). Teachers’ personal and professional reading experiences can have a positive impact upon their pedagogy and influence children’s engagement as readers (Cremin, 2014; Rief, 2002; Bisplinghoff, 2002; Dreher, 2003). Across the module, students will engage with a broad variety of texts and genres, spanning a diverse range of traditional and contemporary titles. Students will explore the role of children’s literature in the primary classroom and the opportunity it affords for developing, supporting and reinforcing curricular learning.

Overview

Tá líon suntasach scoileanna Gaeltachta agus scoileanna lán-Ghaeilge ann agus tá líon suntasach mac léinn ar mian leo múineadh trí mheán na Gaeilge. Léiríonn an taighde is deireanaí an fiúntas a bhaineann le múineadh ábhar eile trí mheán na Gaeilge i scoileanna T2. Aithníonn an Chomhairle Mhúinteoireachta go bhfuil sé riachtanach do gach ábhar oide modúl a dhéanamh ar “Ag Múineadh Trí Mheán na Gaeilge: Teanga agus Cultúr”. I measc na n-aidhmeanna atá ag an modúl seo tá, tuiscint a thabhairt don mhac léinn ar an tumoideachas i gcoitinne agus ar éabhlóid an oideachais trí mheán na Gaeilge in Éirinn ó 1831 ar aghaidh, an Córas Gaelscolaíochta a fhiosrú agus a mhíniú, anailís a dhéanamh ar chúinsí scoileanna Gaeltachta, an mac léinn a chur ar an eolas faoi eagraíochtaí tacaíochta don oideachas trí mheán na Gaeilge, spléachadh a thabhairt ar áiseanna teagaisc agus foghlama don oideachas trí mheán na Gaeilge, dúshláin agus conspóidí a bhaineann leis an oideachas trí mheán na Gaeilge a phlé agus an réamhscolaíocht trí mheán na Gaeilge a fhiosrú. Eagrófar cuairt ar scoil Lan-Ghaeilge do gach mac léinn chun príomhoide na scoile a chur faoi agallamh. Chun na mic léinn a ullmhú don chuairt scoile chun an príomhoide a chur faoi agallamh eagrófar seisiún tobsmaointeoireachta.

Overview

This module enables students to use digital technologies for effective planning, teaching, learning, assessment and critical reflection. It integrates a wide range of creative technologies for classroom use, and develops the pedagogical understanding behind their integration into practice. On successful completion of this module, students will be able to interpret and critically analyse theoretical frameworks underlying the use of technology for teaching and learning. Constructivism, constructionism, behaviourism, user generated content, peer learning, digital learning objects, pedagogies for educational content online, 21st century learning skills, and other concepts are explored and understood. Students create their own digital learning objects, having researched and evaluated appropriate technological and pedagogical interventions for their intended audience/class/age/group, evaluating emergent technologies and analysing their application to education. Opportunities are provided for meaningful reflection on current practice in Irish primary schools.

Each lecture has a practical element, whereby students create the digital learning object associated with that lecture. For example, students will be asked to create their own podcast, publish it to the web, and allow other course members access to it. The course culminates in a practical end-of-year project, where students are asked to design and create digital tools to enhance the teaching of a topic of their choice. Students can choose the topic and the class group for whom the content is designed. They are then assessed based on the submission of the digital tools, and a written critical reflection piece following completion of the task.

Overview

This module enables students to study the arts in both a discrete and integrated manner in year two of the PME programme. Specifically, the module focuses on the discrete subjects of drama and music, and focuses on Integrated Arts as a concept, encompassing music, drama, dance and/or visual arts. The aim of the module is to develop knowledge, both practical and theoretical of these subject areas, with a focus on integrated planning and teaching of the arts. The module aims to develop understanding of the arts, and topics which can be explored through these means while developing skills across all arts areas. Students will be enabled to examine the potential of integrated arts learning from a learning within, through and from the arts perspective. It is anticipated that students would reflect upon the following areas; the transformative potential of integrated arts education, how ideas, feelings and experiences can be explored through the arts, the use of stimuli in arts education and the challenges and merits of integrated arts in the primary school classroom.

Overview

A thorough grounding in the foundation studies is vital for the development of excellent educational practitioners. In this module, the ‘foundational’ approach to the disciplines is reconfigured to promote students’ integrated learning across disciplines, their curriculum methods and other course work, and their classroom practice. Students are introduced to specific theories of each of the disciplines of Sociology of Education, Psychology of Education, History of Education and Philosophy of Education. Students are also enabled to negotiate interrelationships between these disciplines in order that they develop appropriate perspectives to better understand the dynamics and issues of school life and successful classroom pedagogy. The module provides a basis from which students can fully appreciate the potentially transformative role of education in the lives of children. The ultimate aim is that students can employ well-founded and highly appropriate perspectives in their analyses, interactions and research in classrooms and schools.

Overview

The rationale for this module is to introduce students to an understanding of difference and diversity, locally and globally, from a human rights perspective and through a lens of equity and social justice. The three core disciplinary fields of Special Educational Needs, intercultural education/global citizenship education, and educational disadvantage are each rooted in social justice and human rights perspectives throughout this module.

There is now a strong emphasis on creating inclusive learning environments that can cater for pupil diversity. This is reflected in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989),the Education Act (1998), the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs (EPSEN) Act (2004), the Disability Act (2005), the Irish Aid Development Education Strategy 2017-2023, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Consequently, all teachers are expected to become capable in the design and delivery of a broad balanced curriculum that includes all pupils and which incorporates a social justice and global citizenship education perspective.

Aims of the Inclusive Education module

• To promote an understanding and acceptance of difference and diversity through a human rights lens
• To enable students to develop their skills and competence with a view to working in inclusive environments
• To promote an understanding of inclusion and the inclusive school, in relation to the three core areas
• To raise students’ awareness of global and social justice issues as they pertain to primary education

Overview

A critical component of the Professional Masters in Education is the development of the necessary practical skills towards the completion of a research dissertation. This module has been designed to provide students with a critical grounding in the principle and practices that underpin the generation of research based evidence, with a specific focus on its effect on policy and practice in education. The knowledge, skills and understanding, and, in particular, the competence to engage critically with empirical and non-empirical research which students will gain from this section of the module will be directly transferable to their development as pedagogical experts. This module will provide students with the capacity to undertake their own research from a theoretically and methodologically informed perspective.

It aims:

• To develop students’ critical understanding of the reflexive dimension associated with research based evidence.
• To develop students’ understanding of the analytical techniques applied in the context of evidence based research.
• To develop students’ capacity to interpret and critique from a methodological perspective empirical and non-empirical forms of evidence.
• To facilitate students in carrying out their research dissertations with appropriate guidance from their supervisor.