Five students from the BSc Physical Education / PME Physical education programmes have been awarded research internships in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences (PESS).
Projects range from topics relating to social justice, curriculum models, teaching resistance exercise, teacher CPD, and barriers to exercise. Facilitated by the PESS Research Committee, the internship is an opportunity for UL students to spend up to eight weeks in PESS gaining experience of the research process. The internship allows individuals an opportunity to work with PESS faculty, explore further their interest and disposition to postgraduate study and / or to consider working in a university setting.
Mary Dunphy (supervised by Dr Antonio Calderón and Prof Elaine Murtagh) will be working on the project entitled “Shared Responsibility Across a Shared Island (SRASI): Teaching Social Justice in initial teacher education”. Through this internship, Mary will become more knowledgeable on social justice matters within physical education from a research point of view. She will improve her research skills such as gathering, analysing and reporting qualitative data from SRASI project.
Jason Casey (Supervised by Dr Sean Healy) will be supporting the project ‘Disentangling ‘time’ as a barrier to exercise: Development of the Exercise Participation Explained in Relation to Time (EXPERT) model via the Delphi Method’. This internship will see Jason joining the research team to refine the model via the Delphi method. The Delphi method is a systematic approach to reaching consensus among experts via interactive communication. Jason will contribute to all aspects of the Delphi process, including development of the Delphi survey and interaction with the Delphi expert group.
Darragh Collins (supervised by Dr Brendan O’Keeffe) will gain valuable experience with project REACH: Resistance Exercise for Adolescents in Schools. Darragh will be working with data gathered as part of a national survey of physical education teachers’ perspectives of teaching resistance exercise in post-primary school. He will improve his research skills relating to cleaning data and preparing a large dataset for analysis.
Aisling Ní Shé (supervised by Prof Elaine Murtagh and Dr Brendan O’Keeffe) will be working on the project “Pedagogical Approaches for Teaching Health-Related Activity”. Aisling will conduct a literature review of existing approaches to teaching health-related activity. The will include identifying key components of curriculum models and programmes that have been implemented internationally.
Anthony O’Leary (Supervised by Dr Antonio Calderón) will be supporting the PhysEd-Academy, a cross-national continuous professional development for physical educators. He will be participating in the international learning community meetings (with PE teachers from five different countries), analysing field notes, gathering, and analysing diary entries from teachers, and participating in the design of the continuous professional development of Irish PE teachers teaching LCPE.
All of the PESS Interns will present their work at a departmental seminar in spring 2024.
Professor Elaine Murtagh is the Course Director for the BSc Physical Education degree at the Department of Physical Education & Sport Sciences in UL and a member of the Sport Pedagogy and Physical Activity for Health research groups.
Elaine.Murtagh@ul.ie @Elaine Murtagh ORCID ResearchGate
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4232-1403 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elaine-Murtagh
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