New colleague at ECS

Sinéad Flannery is a PhD student in the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin, Ireland, where she works with Dr. Karen Keaveney Primary Thesis Supervisor) and Dr. Monica Gorman. Sinéad is conducting research in conjunction with Teagasc, the national body providing integrated research, training and advisory services in the agri-food sector in Ireland. Her research is entitled 'An Analysis of Agricultural Teachers Experience of their Role as Educators and Identification of Improvements to Better Prepare them for their Role.' She is in the third year of her PhD programme and has a significant amount of data collected and analysed to date. The key focus of her research is on the agricultural educator within the vocational education sector. She wishes to investigate and recommend potential improvements to both the preparation and training of this cohort of educators.

One of Sinéads objectives for the study is to develop a 'Pedagogical Competency Framework' for agricultural educators. The purpose of this framework will be to identify the competencies both new and existing educators should possess in an attempt to subsequently identify the strategic training needs of individual agricultural educators. She hopes to develop this framework during her time here in WUR. It is hoped that the 'Pedagogical Competency Framework' will be used as a tool for auditing, assessing, and planning teaching and learning needs for education staff within the vocational education sector both nationally and internationally.

Sinéad will be staying at ECS for two months under the supervision of Dr. Renate Wesselink.

Contact: sinead.flannery@wur.nl