Supporting the educational progress of children in care: a qualitative exploration of primary special education teachers’ views and experiences in the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

International evidence has convincingly established the poorer educational outcomes experienced by children in care compared to their peers. Teachers have the potential to play a powerful role in the educational progress of this group by providing high quality learning opportunities and a source of high expectations, advocacy and support. Special education teachers have a particularly important role to play given the high rates of special educational needs and disability experienced by children in care. This thesis explores primary special education teachers’ views and experiences of supporting the educational progress of children in care. Adopting a qualitative research design guided by an interpretivist framework, 11 online and seven in-person individual, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted, transcribed and thematically analysed. Participants were primary special education teachers in the Republic of Ireland with current or recent experience (within the past 3 years) of working with children in care. The sample was recruited from a government funded postgraduate diploma programme for special education teachers on which the researcher teaches and via an emailed invitation to all primary schools in County Dublin.

The main findings of the research focus on a number of themes including the high incidence of emotional difficulties experienced by children in care coupled with a range of system-level challenges including poor inter-agency collaboration and communication, inadequate access to key services and lack of TPL which impact teachers’ efforts to support the educational progress of children in care and shape teachers’ experiences of working with this group.

Date of Award	Dec 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Dublin City University
Supervisor	Karen Winter (Supervisor) & Katrina Lloyd (Supervisor)