Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection
Institute of Education (St Patrick’s Campus), DCU

2 Year Fixed Term Contract

Introduction

The DCU Institute of Education is the newest faculty of Dublin City University. It is based in a €70 million purpose built facility on the DCU St Patrick’s Campus in Drumcondra in Dublin. Established in 2016 as Ireland’s first University faculty of Education, it has a staff of more than 130 full-time academics and a student body in excess of 4,000.

Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection

The Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection (EQI) is a research centre specialising in the evaluation of educational policies, programmes and personnel. Evaluation involves research to make data informed judgments about organisational and professional performance. Our work encompasses schools, other learning centres and the wider public service. It is primarily concerned with governance and accountability mechanisms including quality assurance processes, school inspection and organisational self evaluation. We also undertake evaluations of educational programmes and projects. EQI is a multidisciplinary research group with a diverse membership drawn from within DCU, from schools and other educational institutions within Ireland and abroad and from a range of other organisations. The candidate should be capable of working in a team and contributing to the development of the research, policy agenda and the activities of EQI.

Role Overview

The Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection seeks to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher to undertake a range of research-based tasks related broadly to school self-evaluation and school inspection. The researcher will be expected to be involved with a number of current and future research projects.

Research Career Framework

As part of this role the researcher will be required to participate in the DCU Research Career Framework. This framework is designed to provide significant professional development opportunities to Researchers and offer the best opportunities in terms of a wider career path. The role may include teaching duties to support with module delivery.

Principal duties and responsibilities

The main duties of the position will include, but are not limited to:

• The completion of research including literature reviews, data-gathering, analysis of data and the production of research reports;
• Preparation of teaching material;
• The development of journal articles, arising from research conducted;
• Organisation of a DCU-based seminar, collation of self-evaluation resources and the compilation of a report in advance of the seminar;
• Preparation of project proposals and grant applications;
• Carry out administrative work associated with the programme of research as necessary.

The candidate will work under the guidance of Dr. Martin Brown and Dr. Shivaun O’Brien.

Qualifications and Experience:

Candidates for this position must have:

• A doctorate in the social sciences or a cognate discipline;
• Experience in the management of research projects;
• Excellent research skills, with a good track record of publication output;
• The ability to conduct reviews of literature, conduct qualitative and quantitative research;
• Familiarity with the use of SPSS and NVivo, and can produce research reports;
• Familiarity with data analysis techniques;
• Excellent presentation and communication skills;
• Familiarity with Social Network Analysis;
• Experience of bidding for large scale projects.

Competencies

The post holder will be assessed under the following competencies:

Discipline knowledge and Research skills – Demonstrates knowledge of a research discipline and the ability to conduct a specific programme of research within that discipline.

Understanding the Research Environment – Demonstrates an awareness of the research environment (for example funding bodies) and the ability to contribute to grant applications.

Communicating Research – Demonstrates the ability to communicate their research with their peers and the wider research community (for example presenting at conferences and publishing research in relevant journals) and the potential to teach and tutor students.

Managing & Leadership skills - Demonstrates the potential to manage and lead a research project including the supervision of undergraduate students.