“… The other night I was having a drink with some colleagues after work. Various topics came up, but we spent a bit of time talking about teaching. It appears that I’m in a small minority of my physics colleagues in that I actually like teaching. In fact, the older I’ve got the more I enjoy it. There’s always a limit, of course …” (more)
[In the Dark, 10 March]
“Hibernia College, the online education institute that trains national teachers in Ireland, is chasing new opportunities abroad and is preparing to train up to 5,000 teachers in Haiti over the next two years …” (more)
[Siobhan Creaton, Independent, 10 March]
“St Patrick’s College, a constituent college of Dublin City University, is set to launch the first Masters of Teaching for primary and secondary teachers in Ireland in September 2011, if approval is given …” (more)
[Tallyman, 14 February]
“Education deans from some of the top research universities in the United States have called on US News & World Report to rethink its plans for evaluating teacher education programs. In a joint letter, the deans questioned not only the methodology to be used, but also the magazine’s plan to say that institutions that don’t participate have ‘failed’ to meet certain standards …” (more)
[Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, 8 February]
“A popular notion within the academy is that teaching quality cannot be measured, but this is an article of faith, not a demonstrated fact. Very few institutions have made a systematic effort to measure teaching quality, largely because the faculty is opposed to it and administrators have little incentive to discover true teaching value added …” (more)
[Robert Martin and Andrew Gillen, Minding Campus, 7 February]
“Higher Leaving Certificate maths results could be a prerequisite for embarking on teacher training courses, if proposals from the profession’s regulator body are adopted …” (more)
[Niall Murray, Irish Examiner, 20 January]
“The United States’ educational and research pre-eminence is being undermined, and some of the chief underminers are universities themselves, according to articles this week in Science and Nature magazines …” (more)
[Paul Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 January]
“I think we all remember the first time we walked into a classroom knowing that it was completely and fully ours. I was excited and terrified all at once …” (more)
[Nels P Highberg, Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 January]
“This year, 2010-2011, I am embarking on my first year lecturing. I have sat in many teaching interviews over the last few years reciting my virtues as a scholar to the interview panel and promising that I would be a wonderful teacher and gifted communicator …” (more)
[Lisa Marie Griffith, Pue’s Occurrences, 5 January]
“Student teachers should be assessed on their reading, writing and numeracy skills before they qualify, a controversial report suggests …” (more)
[John Walshe, Independent, 28 December]
“Fine Gael Seanad education spokesperson Senator Fidelma Healy Eames has slammed schools which employ retired teachers to provide substitute cover when hundreds of newly qualified teachers are jobless …” (more)
[Mary O’Connor, Galway Advertiser, 21 October]
“I have been fortunate to have had excellent teachers throughout my entire education. I was thinking recently how many of those teachers taught me lessons outside of class. Mr. Taylor was my American history teacher in high school and I worked for him in the summers (two bucks an hour!) doing odd jobs …” (more)
[Bill Tierney, 21st Century Scholar, 20 October]
“Schools are employing more than 400 retired teachers for substitute work despite high unemployment among newly qualified graduates, according to figures from the Department of Education …” (more)
[Olivia Kelly, Irish Times, 19 October]
“Do you see your students as products? It’s ok, really, I’m not going to judge. Lot’s of people see it that way. You can use whatever metaphor you like if it helps you get the job done. Lots of Universities, implicitly or implicitly, see students as products …” (more)
[Robert Cosgrave, Tertiary 21, 5 October]
“The original core mission of universities was to provide students with the best possible learning experience. The main obligation of a professor was to teach, and to do it in the best possible way. Let us leave aside for a moment that most lecturers and professors were never actually trained to teach, it was nevertheless their main vocation …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 20 September]
“… Taking students seriously to me means trying to intellectually engage with those of them with good ideas rather than just nodding sympathetically when they whinge about courseloads. College should be a practice swing at thinking big ideas, a chance to do them as a set of rehearsals before the real thing starts …” (more)
[Liam Delaney, Geary Behavioural Economics Blog, 10 September]
“It’s a difficult question to answer, say Robin Wilson and David Glenn, senior writers for The Chronicle. They explain why assessment efforts struggle to gain acceptance – and why some faculty members worry that attempts to improve teaching quality will cost them autonomy.” (audio)
[Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 September]
“At Tertiary level, are teachers necessary? It seems like a stupid question, but often stupid questions have interesting answers, if it is only that we understand the conditions that make it a stupid question, and whether those conditions might change. History has a way of undermining assumptions so that yesterdays stupid question is tomorrows front page surprise …” (more)
[Robert Cosgrave, Tertiary21, 6 September]
“… ‘If you were going to see a doctor and the doctor said, “I’ve been really busy since I got out of medical school, and so I’m going to treat you with the techniques I learned back then”, you’d be rightly incensed,” he told me recently. ‘Yet there are a lot of faculty who say with a straight face, “I don’t need to change my teaching”, as if nothing has been learned about teaching since …'” (more)
[Jeffrey R Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 July]
“The other day Marcus wrote a post about teaching first-year classes, & some of the things he said made me reflect on how I became a ‘first-year specialist’ & why I get so much enjoyment out of teaching at that level …” (more)
[Alison Campbell, Talking Teaching, 23 July]
Ninth Level Ireland 