In this conversation Lisa Gallagher and Niamh Áine Ó’Neill talk about the research they undertook as Professional Masters in Education students on the preparedness of Newly Qualified Teachers to include students with Autism, and all students, in their mainstream classrooms. Lisa and Niamh Áine share their research findings, their learnings as they move from being the student teacher to being the teacher, and their hopes for inclusive education training in Initial Teacher Education programmes.

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Transcript of this episode

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

newly qualified teachers, research, inclusion, initial teacher education, teaching,
SPEAKERS
Lisa, Mags, Niamh Áine

Mags 00:00
Welcome, talking about all things inclusion, a podcast where I get to meet and learn from people in the field of inclusion, in its broadest sense, that inspire me. I hope they’ll inspire you too. Last year, I ended Season Two with a conversation with a group of professional masters in education ( PME ) students about their research. So it only makes sense to start this season, season three, continuing to talk about research, the research our next generation of teachers is producing. Today, I am talking with two inspiring newly qualified teachers who, as part of their PME last year, took on the task of exploring just how prepared are newly qualified teachers when they start teaching to support students with autism in their class. Talking about their research today is Lisa Gallagher and Niamh Áine O’Neill. Lisa is the teacher of maths and fur house educate together Secondary School, where she is also teacher in the autism class. Niamh Áine is a science and maths teacher in Stan hopes, secondary school ladies, I’ve had the privilege of accompanying you on this research journey as part of your PME, and your commitment to including all your students in your classes and making your subjects accessible to everyone is inspiring, and that’s why I’m so delighted to have you with me today to Share your and your students learning journey with us.

Lisa 01:22
Hi, Mags, thanks so much.

Niamh Áine 01:24
Hi. How are you? good to be here

Mags 01:26
This is just going to be absolutely fantastic. So I’m going to throw the first question out to both of you. So Lisa and Niamh Áine can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourselves and what led you to this inclusion path, and specifically this wonderful piece of research.

Niamh Áine 01:47
Yes, so I can start so I I’m from Kilkenny any but I teach up in Dublin, and I guess my interest in inclusion probably stemmed from home majority. So I think I was about 12, and my brother got diagnosed with, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s back then, but now, I think it all is just classed as ASD. And I was really appreciative of how the teachers, when we were in school together, they really incorporated him in the class. He was never left out, and he actually has only recently gone on he’s studying psychology now in Maynooth. So I guess knowing that I wanted to be a teacher, I always wanted to make sure that I was a teacher who also made sure that students were as welcome as my brother was welcome. So I wanted to ensure that I constantly worked on ways to include students, and then I just kind of fell down the inclusion rabbit hole, so I’m still here.

Mags 02:45
Oh, that’s lovely. Niamh Áine, yeah, it’s a little bit of kind of forward there as well, isn’t it, which is so important, Lisa, what brought you to this?

Lisa 02:55
Well, not as many personal reasons as Niamh, really, but I, I’ve kind of just always had a big interest in inclusion. I’ve kind of always been drawn to that side of education. I think it was mostly when I was on placement I found I really struggled to include all students in the classroom, which was really difficult, because you would see students being kind of left behind, no matter how hard you tried to keep them on track. So yeah, I think I just wanted to make sure that when I finally was fully qualified, I had a space I could create, a space where everyone felt included.

Mags 03:33
Okay, that’s really interesting. So both of you have said it’s about making your students welcome, and there’s the personal and the professional experiences, and what I find really interesting, and I’m going to come back to your end comment, Lisa, is that your research is on how prepared newly qualified teachers are, and you spoke about the challenges you identified when you were out in placement, and how you were getting that preparedness, which actually your research shows you weren’t getting. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lisa 04:09
Yeah of course. So during our course, we had four years, I think it was of placement, or three or four, depending on what subjects you did. And I just kind I just kind of we noticed during the years that people just weren’t really clued in, really like we weren’t prepared, and then we noticed ourselves through lectures that we just we weren’t getting in depth enough. We were getting the quick, brief overview of different areas of AEN or SEN, as we mentioned in the thesis, and nothing was going in depth. We were told so much about differentiation, about different means of inclusion, but not exactly how to implement it and how to practice or perfect that inclusion skill.

Mags 05:02
you, in your research, you went and first of all, I’d say AEN is additional educational needs and SEN special education needs. But your research, you weren’t just looking at what was going on in your university. This was a wider Irish initial teacher education preparation, newly qualified teacher sense of confidence about where they were at. So can you talk to us about that? How did you go about it? What were you looking for from the newly qualified teachers who were participating in this research, and what did you find out for them? Was it the same as your sense going out into the real world, or was it different?

Niamh Áine 05:50
Well, I guess the main thing we were looking for is that we always kind of wanted that general perspective. So of course, going to the one university, we had similar experiences, but we all going on different placements, we would have different kind of professional experiences, like you said. So when we were looking for our NQTs, we didn’t kind of go out looking for someone from Mary I, someone from DCU, someone from UCD, but it just happened that, like I know, in my interview group, I had Hibernia and UCD, so those two people had different experiences that they were able to tell me about, and that kind of led us to seeing the differences in initial teacher education in different colleges, which we didn’t expect. But it was good that we kind of found that out, that could help us see, maybe there could be something in the future to generalise or make it more uniform, that each teacher comes out with the same, not exactly the same skills, but definitely the same baseline to build upon.

Mags 06:57
And in terms of that baseline, what was, was there one other than, I mean, we’ll name it- your key finding was that NQTs, newly qualified teachers are not prepared. That was your key finding. But was there any baseline in terms of confidence? Were, was everyone you interviewed coming out with the same ‘we didn’t get enough. We liked what we got. We didn’t like what we got’?

Niamh Áine 07:26
I think I remember that the only teacher that was surveyed that was confident in their skills was actually trained abroad. So that was kind of, yeah. It was something we were like, oh, there’s definitely a lack of training somewhere. I think the main kind of repetition was that teachers were mentioning differentiation, but all the teachers had different understandings of what differentiation was. So you had the scaffolding and you had just forms of different types of questioning. But if we actually kind of pushed them, I was like, Well, what is differentiation to you? There was different understanding. So we know that teachers, they were in the initial teacher education, there was they were provided with skills, but their confidence and their understanding of what differentiation was, for example, varied a lot. And definitely, I think Lisa you’d agree with a few months years experience, that’s when they found their confidence in using differentiation and using those skills that they would have learned.

Mags 08:32
And it’s interesting that in your research, you did take a differentiation approach when you were asking questions, even though you were learning about Universal Design for Learning, and that was purpose on purpose, because that is the language that other teachers had. But even in terms of going back when you said that everyone had different understandings of what differentiation was, and I remember we talked, some of them were talking about UDL, but they didn’t know what UDL was. They were talking about something else, but they didn’t know what that was, and everything went under that term differentiation. And I remember you telling me what a challenge you you found that to be as well in terms of if everyone isn’t speaking of the same hymn sheet or approaching their students with autism and all of their students in the same way that that also is having an impact on on the teacher and their confidence and their self efficacy, but also the inclusion happening in the class.

Lisa 09:35
yeah. I think that was, that was one of our main findings, really, with the differentiation. Because, as nivanya said, we all everyone mentioned differentiation. Think 17 out of 21 mentioned that what they used to include students with additional needs, but they actually didn’t know what it was. And yeah, and they mentioned, like, some of our main themes or sub themes were mixed ability and student choice, which are really areas of UDL. And now, since finishing the PM, I’m working in a school where UDL is our focus, and really getting to use that practically shows the big difference, and like shows why differentiation wasn’t wasn’t really helping us to include students while we were on placement, because we weren’t taught enough about it, and it might not, it probably wasn’t the best approach for the students within our classrooms.

Mags 10:33
So it’s interesting there, Lisa, that you’ve actually brought up your practice. So your September, October, Novemember, December, January- your five months both of you now into being professional qualified teachers, and already you’ve pointed out that the practice in your school is contrary to some instruction, not us, we got UDL, but in to some the practice in your school is different to what others get and Nimah Áine. I’m not sure what the practice in your school is, but again, that even in newly qualified teachers, because so many of you come into schools, puts you at different levels in terms of your own preparedness and your own confidence, but also in terms of what you can practically do and feel confident to do, to support your students and to be inclusive.

Lisa 11:27
Yeah, I think that was the biggest thing about the confidence we we didn’t really know like we weren’t given the specific instructions, so we didn’t feel confident to do it. And one of our main findings was that teachers learn to include students because of experience. So we interviewed a mix of newly qualified teachers and experienced teachers, and that was our biggest finding, that you learn by doing because we did. We don’t have that baseline from our initial teacher education, and I think it’s really obvious, now that we’re five or six months in, that that is definitely true. Like I said, my school is a big focus on UDL, and I actually work in our autism class as well. So getting to see, getting to put into practice what we actually researched is really showing how big of a finding that was,

Niamh Áine 12:25
I was gonna say that when you’re kind of, when you’re doing your placement in the professional masters of education, or if you’re in a concurrent course, like the nerves you feel, you just assume it’s because that you’re not finished yet. And that confidence comes with time, and it does, but it also comes with just putting the practice into place. You can’t rush the confidence. The more that you feel you’re making mistakes, the more that I know myself, like when I first started. I think it was my it could have been my fourth year or my second year the PE placement, like I heard level two learning program, and I was like, Oh my God, this. I’d never heard that before. This is clearly a problem. I’ve made a mistake. But now, five months in, and I have a student who is in the level two learning program, I’m able to make the booklets I know the course. And that’s confidence that grew with experience. It’s nothing. Although I did learn about it in university, it had, I to take the time myself and the confidence had to grow naturally. I couldn’t rush it kind of

Mags 13:31
Yeah, I suppose it’s the difference between what you can get on a one or a two hour lecture, regardless of whether it’s somebody speaking at you or it’s engaging, and you’re getting to delve in to what you learn when you are there on the spot. These are your students. These are in there, in your care, both their education and their well being and what you can do. So what I’d love to know from both of you, because you’ve both talked about that, jumping from being a student into what you’re learning in practice, what is the biggest thing that you’ve actually learned in practice that came out of your research as a gap, or something that experienced teachers were saying? Or we’re confident in this, because now we have experience

Niamh Áine 14:16
Something that we kind of we found it as like a surprising key finding, and I’m definitely feeling it more and more now, is there’s actually a kind of a we found that there was a universal reliance on SNAs in the classroom that almost filled the gap of initial teacher education. So that, from our interviews, we found that teachers were relying on the SNA almost team teaching in a sense of differentiating the work down for the students who might have those additional educational needs. And now that I am a teacher as well, I can feel myself kind of falling into the habits being like. Like, oh, like, would you help me just to go through this with this student, just while I do with this with the rest of the class? And then I can see myself and thinking back to my thesis, being like, No, this is something that I need to build up my own skills so that we can work together. But I’m not relying on her to fill just because I’m working with the rest of the rest of the class doesn’t mean that I can ignore this student, in a sense, that SNA do such a wonderful job in schools that we should be able to assist them as much as they assist us, in a sense, but that’s something I’ve learned.

Mags 15:35
Yeah and Niamh Áine, that’s a lovely correlation between a finding where you were going. Can’t believe they’re doing that, to how it’s translated into practice, and how easy a teacher can go into that with the pressures of curriculum, but having that consciousness that you’ve just outlined there your own consciousness to say, no, that’s not the way to do it, and this is what I’m going to do. Thanks. Niamh Áine, Lisa, did you have a from thesis research to practice moment?

Lisa 16:07
yeah. A few really. I think the the main thing was the the reliance on SNAS which, and there’s a few other comments. When we were doing our interviews, we were like, oh my god, I can’t believe that there’s five people that do that or have had that experience, and then we have that exact same experience once we’re starting schools, and it’s by taking that ownership ourselves. So I think that was a big thing. I’ve kind of, I keep reminding myself, like, no, we researched this. We know that we need to take control of including all students in the classroom. It is our job as much as anyone else’s, but I think a lot of mine was kind of the support. So, like, I know I’ve mentioned differentiation and UDL, but like, the lack of teachers that mentioned UDL at the time was was very baffling. And now I’m always thinking back every time I do use it, like, okay, no, there was people using UDL. They just thought it was differentiation and kind of bringing that approach in constantly to things where maybe I’m thinking, Oh, I’m not using UDL. I’m not differentiating, but I am, and I’m not realizing that I am as well as the main supports, like we already mentioned, the SNAs, but time, like given, giving ourselves time to go through different resources to make sure that they they suit everyone in the class, and relying on your your peers and your departments in those different areas, like doing the research, made me mainly realize how important it was, but actually using those resources and them support structures, it really shows you how much, how relevant there absolutely,

Mags 17:44
Absolutely, and that’s an awful lot of practice. And you know, it’s your ownership and your colleagues ownership on what you are doing in terms of building up your skills. But when you considered your findings, you did actually looked at policy and you made some really good recommendations in terms of, you know, your wish list for what could help newly qualified teachers be more prepared and be more confident when they step in to school in September as a professional teacher.

Lisa 18:19
Yeah. So our main like we, we had a few, few quite, quite relevant key findings. Um, but we’ve already mentioned, already there’s, there’s quite, there was a vague approach to SEN or AEN in a lot of different initial teacher educations. I think we already mentioned that there was one teacher who studied abroad who felt comfortable, which shows there’s a real issue with initial teacher education in Ireland. So our main key finding and recommendation was that specific methodologies are needed, not just ASD, not just autism, but in all areas of additional needs, and that they need to be compulsory because we had teachers that we interviewed that said they were on offer in college, but they weren’t compulsory. So I didn’t go. It was more important for me to do X, Y and Z. So like, there’s such a high percentage of students that feel excluded because they’re not being included in the classroom. So they like these lectures need to be compulsory, these different methodologies. So

Mags 19:25
Well, I I’m really impressed with that recommendation to the point, as you know, that here in this university, we actually discussed what we could do around methodologies, which shows the power of research and shows the power of students voice. Because you were students at the time to the point where we couldn’t get methodologies for every subjects, but we got our advanced UDL, where our students had to go and spend a day in a school. So Lisa, you hosted them where they got to see everything and see how inclusion works in practice and what. Was wonderful was that these students came out as they were going, I see what teaching looks like. I can see what teaching can be. Okay, this is inclusion. Yes, it is hard work, but look at the benefits of it. So as two of the researchers in your project, how do you feel about that, that knowing that one recommendation while it, while it didn’t go the whole way, it did actually make an impact on ITE. And what we were doing on our second years,

Niamh Áine 20:34
I think it’s like it. It almost when we saw that it’ll happen, we were like, oh, like it. It was a warm feeling. We couldn’t really place the feeling, but it also it does, like you said, it shows the power of research. And like, the research doesn’t lie. Like, as much as you said, when they left, they had learned something show. It was shows there was a need for it. It was like, it was really, like, almost full circle moment where, like, it took us back to the PME and being like, How could, if we had had that module, what would it look like for us now? Like, would we still be the teachers who we are? Would we be able to do something different? Could it have given us the confidence? So it’s going to be really exciting. It’s going to be really exciting to see, obviously, at the end of those students courses, how they how they found it? Would they recommend it? And like, what we did do they have recommendations to future years and that. That’s the like as teachers, it’s the best way to learn, like you learn from your peers, and learning is passed down, so hopefully it continues to grow and help people. And at the end of the day, as much as we can have the students, that’s the key at the end.

Mags 21:44
Absolutely. Lisa, did you want to come in there?

Lisa 21:48
Yeah, I was just going to say it was, it was kind of a crazy moment for me to and obviously we heard that it was going to be a methodology lecture, but then actually seeing you come in with the students and have four students, PME, students who did my course, sitting at the back of my room watching me teach like it was crazy. And it’s just so exciting to see, to see that happening, you know. And like Niamh Áine, you said, it’s exciting to think of like, where they can go now that they have that additional bit of information that we we didn’t have

Mags 22:23
absolutely and I know that. I mean, the the main focus of your research was on initial teacher education, and you not being prepared, but you did dip your toes in to when you are a newly qualified teacher, and the actions and responsibilities that you can take there. So now that you’re in there, what should we say five months come to the end, end of your your year, your first year as professional qualified teachers? What? What recommendations, what suggestions or advice would you give to teachers coming in next year in terms of your ownership and your responsibility and what you can do yourself, because you don’t have your lecturers behind you now, it’s up to you. What would you say?

Lisa 23:15
I think my main recommendation would just be to keep learning. Don’t stop like you can learn from anyone and everyone they’re like learn through CPD courses, conversations with your colleagues, if you’re interested, and you have the resources to be able to go on to further education. There’s no limit to the amount of CPD you can do. Do you know? So just keep learning. Even just go observe a class and see how another teacher, um is including students in their classroom. Just don’t stop. Just keep learning.

Mags 23:49
Oh, I love that Lisa. Niamh Áine?

Niamh Áine 23:52
yeah, literally, like, cannot recommend um. CPD, enough like, I’m after finishing on there on like trauma informed practice, and they actually mentioned how students with additional educational needs can often fall into stressful situations, and them acting out is due to a need not being met. So it literally, no matter what you learn, it still always comes back to focusing on the needs of the students and if they have additional needs or not. And the other kind of main thing is that, like leaving the lecturers behind can be very scary. But the best thing for me about teaching is that the staff room is like they always say, like, you have your village. The Staff Room is your village, like it’s community. You are never on your own. If you have a bad class, chances are other teachers have had that class before. They can give you advice or just give you kind of shoulder to cry on while you’re just getting back into your own window of tolerance, leaving that stress behind so. So as much as you lose the university, you do kind of gain a community that can still provide you support resources that your best friend is the teacher who’s been here for 20 odd years, who has everything you need laid out, and you can also help her with the new stuff you’ve gained. So really, just find your school, find your community, and just enjoy it. Teaching is, well, I find teaching is just a career that I didn’t expect to have so much fun in almost it was stressful in college. It’s still stressful now, but I’m definitely having a lot of fun with it.

Mags 25:37
Oh, I am so glad to hear that. And again, like I always believe my students are having fun and they’re enjoying it, then I’m going to and absolutely going in that, that invitation from colleagues to go into their classrooms, the the chat even, even if it is, oh my god, I had the worst class to oh my god, I just had the best class. And being able to go into your staff room and your village and talk about that is amazing. So we have talked in terms of your research findings. We’ve talked about the responsibility of initial teacher education, and we’ve talked about your role and responsibilities as newly qualified or experienced teachers. But there was a third element to your research, and that was, for want of a better word, the the government’s or Department of Education’s responsibility, and you did hone in a little bit on on policy in your recommendations and what you would like to see out there to support you as teachers, to support your students and to create those inclusive environments. Any thoughts on that?

Lisa 26:45
Yeah. So I think our main thing was, like I said, the the ITE programs are not the same across the board. There’s a lot of disparity between each University’s approach. So something compulsory, something. What’s the word universal is 100% needed. We also found during research, there was a misunderstanding around the impact of the EPSEN Act, and it’s currently under review. Now, I’m not the policy person, so I don’t know too much about this was, yeah, it is under review and and we think that one of our findings, really for interviews was that more clarification about how this needs to be used, or the significance of it is really needed, because teachers don’t, don’t really understand this. There was a lot of a lot of misunderstanding

Niamh Áine 27:40
And even like for ourselves as students, like we kind of found the EPSEN Act like we heard it in lectures, but looking into it, we didn’t realize that the EPSEN Act is the reason students with additional education needs are basically allowed to sit in front of you in a mainstream class, which is we found, during kind of our research and talking to teachers, that students with additional educational needs, they do, like mix ability classes work well, and teachers struggle to teach mixed ability classes that in college, you’re taught for one group, you’re not taught for the whole group together, which does kind of come back to UDL, where differentiating for one but also helping the whole group overall. So definitely more foCUS on the EPSEN Act making everyone aware of its significance and looking forward to the findings of the review and any any developments that can be made towards it will be very interesting to see in the future.

Mags 28:46
Absolutely, because it was so interesting when I was reading and when you would be feeding back to me, the lack of clarity by teachers on what the EPSEN Act actually was even, even, I think one of your participants didn’t even realize it was legislation. They were they were talking about it as a guideline.

Lisa 29:09
Yeah, there’s so much misunderstanding. I mean, I am an example, so I find it really confusing. And I’m a very much a practical person like I said, I’ve learned so much in the last five months. So the policy and all this, I find it so confusing. So yeah, our main, like, our biggest recommendation, there is just clarification. We need to know what it means and how it can impact our classrooms

Mags 29:33
Absolutely. Now, Niamh Áine and, Lisa, I’m I’m going to put you on the spot with something new that’s come out, but I know you won’t have read, but in I’d like you to think about it in terms of your research and the connection between the two of them. So you know, I was always talking about the 2019 National Council for special education policy advice or policy interim report, and telling you wait for the policy advice paper, whoa, it came out last week. Okay, and as I predicted, it is slowly moving towards a model of full inclusion, where with the exception of our most vulnerable students and our students with complex needs, that students will all be taught in the mainstream classroom. It says, in addition to those recommendations, that UDL will need to be embedded in schools so that you can have inclusive learning, teaching, learning and assessment, you will be delighted to hear it also says that the NCSE National Council for special education has to liaise with initial teacher education programs to embed inclusion UDL and disability awareness in their programs. Okay, so this is information just new to you, okay? Because, literally, it came out last week. You know, I’m a nerd, so you know, I was waiting for it, and I have it read extensively. But in terms of your research last year, the good, the bad, the gaps. What do you think? And finally, this report does say we have to wait for the EPSEN act as well, and we have to see what that says. What are your thoughts? How do you think this links in with what you were saying last year? IE, we need more help.

Niamh Áine 31:30
I think it’s, first of all. I think it’s great that there is a link between our findings and the report, even as far as the NCSE linking in with initial teacher education that hopefully will obviously fill the gaps, or at least start laying groundwork, like we said, for a uniform initially teacher education, where each college will have certain basics to get across to teachers in future, and also UDL being embedded in schools as well. I think it was actually one of your lectures Margaret, where it’s something that I literally have not forgotten since college. But it was about the airplane that when they started making the seats for the smallest person and the biggest person, that no one actually fitted in the seats. But when they made it kind of different, there is no average person in the classroom. So helping each student helps everybody, and it’s something that, as Lisa has said, every teacher has known about it. Every teacher knows that you can teach for one you teach for all, that it’s important to help the most vulnerable, but don’t let any student fall in the crack. So it’s about time that it’s almost foundations, that every school has that, like you said, it’s, it’s good thing. I’m very happy with that report. I’ll read more into it. I’m very happy with it.

32:58
I’ll send you a copy. Lisa, you must be, you must be sitting there like clapping your hands, going, we’re ahead of the curve in our school. How do you feel? And your your principal actually sent it back to me with highlighted sections, so she so she’s on it.

Lisa 33:14
Yeah, it’s amazing. I’ve heard snippets of having a chance to read the whole thing, but it’s very exciting. Like we said, we um, a bit ahead of the curve in school, but actually like that. Our our findings were were like our research showed the same thing. So it’s really interesting that teachers, like these, random 21 teachers across the country that we interviewed were how like thinking along the same lines as this. This report, which is exciting, it shows that teachers are ready, I think, to implement all this, which is very exciting. I think I’m in a different kind of position, because I get to see UDL in practice in big mixed ability mainstream classes, but I also get the chance to work within small groups, where sometimes I still do need to differentiate on the rare occasion for specific needs. So I think it’s interesting. I’m going to read into it further, and kind of like just see where it’s going to be applied. But I think it’s really exciting to hopefully we can move forward to that to that stage, absolutely.

Mags 34:18
And it must be a lovely feeling that you had this. We need more in it. We need more professional learning, CPD and to see it now in a policy advice paper, I think is wonderful. Well done to ye for that. We are coming to the end of our conversation. So I’m just wondering, are there any resources for further independent learning that you would like to share with us today?

Lisa 34:48
Yeah, so I think we touched on earlier with CPD courses. There’s countless out there that you could you could do, like a lot of. Teachers Now, unfortunately, we didn’t get as much as we needed during university. So if there’s any areas that you feel you need to get a bit of more education on. There is so many different CPD courses you can do, and all the education centers in Ireland have plenty on offer.

Mags 35:19
And Niamh Áine and Lisa, any final words that you would like to share with everyone today?

Lisa 35:26
I think the main thing is just we mentioned it again. We mentioned earlier. But just to keep learning, don’t get disheartened if you feel like you’re not getting the chance to include all all students in your classroom, we we might not have all had the same experience, um, during our initial teacher education, so we’re not all at the same level. Um, so try not to get disheartened, but just keep pushing yourself and taking ownership over over that learning.

Niamh Áine 35:55
My advice is to take the same advice that you give to your students on an everyday basis that it takes time to get good at something. We’re building skills, we’re building habits. And I know myself, I don’t know if Lisa would agree I’m not the same person I was a year ago. And that’s the beautiful thing about teaching. So keep going, and I’m sure everybody’s doing a great job, and just to believe in yourself

Mags 36:22
absolutely and just then, before we do end, this was a big piece of research for you, and it was a group piece of research, so maybe just to perhaps acknowledge the rest of your team who aren’t With us, who aren’t with us today, but were there through the tears, the laughter, the multicolored pens and posters. So if you, if you just want to give a shout out to the rest of your team,

Lisa 36:53
yeah, of course. So it was myself, nivonia, with Nicole, Emer, Nisha and Jack and our brilliant supervisor Mags. And yeah, it was, it was an excellent process. It was tough, but I think we all, we all enjoyed it because of who we got to work with,

Mags 37:13
absolutely. And collaboration can be so, so difficult, and as a group that size for you to manage it. And again, I think it showed all the different levels and where every everyone sat in their journey on it, which I think is wonderful. Niamh, did you want to add anything there?

Niamh Áine 37:30
No, I was going to say similar to what Lisa said, that like, because of the stressful times and the happy times, like, we still have the thesis group chat, and there’s still sometimes questions into it, if anyone’s struggling on a day. So the whole process is literally like the, I would say, like, these people are my closest friends from college, and it’s just like it was, overall, it was a great experience, and I’m thankful for the group like Lisa, we worked well together. So

Mags 38:04
Absolutely and you know something, what a wonderful example of teacher professional learning or CPD, the simplicity of a WhatsApp group where you can throw questions into it. I mean, when you talk about continuing your learning and asking the questions like that is probably a key takeaway for teachers listening to this, your your Whatsapp group can have the answers for you. On that note, I want to say goodbye to everyone. My listeners know I have my usual send off, but I think when we are looking at the next generation of teachers, and we see people like you, Niamh Áine and Lisa, coming back to talk about research you did last year as a student and how it has impacted you as practitioners, as professional teachers, and to hear your journey and to hear your passion for inclusion and your passion for ensuring that all of your students gets their best, gets to be their best selves, just shows what good hands our children are in and what good hands that the future of teaching is in as well. So I just want to thank you for that principles out there. They’re already taken, so I’m sorry you’ve missed that boat. They’re happy and content where they are, so there will be no poaching. But thank you so much for joining myself, Lisa and nivani for talking about all things inclusion, and I hope you will all join me again soon. Thank you again, ladies for sharing with us. It was wonderful for me to get to catch up with you again and have this chat. So thank you so much.

Lisa 39:56
Thank you so much. Mags

Niamh Áine 39:57
. Thanks so much. Bye.