DCU Centre for Engaged Research Lecture Series - Martin Brown

The Centre for Engaged Research is delighted to welcome Martin Brown to take part in our Autumn lecture series 'Community Co-Researchers' and present his work entitled 'Towards clarity on the Impact of Educational Networks and Community-Based Evaluation. Lessons to be learned from the Island of Ireland.'. This is the second of six guest lectures in our series and we believe Martin's work is an excellent addition to the series.

Martin notes that Barber et al. in Mckinsey (2010) sparked a debate about a lack of improvement in many education systems. They argued that having reached a certain quality threshold, education systems in many countries are not aiming for higher achievement and fail to innovate in their teaching and learning. One mechanism to make this final but difficult leap ‘from good to great’ is through the process of creating community-based educational networks that are at particulate junctures, evaluated through a process of community-based / Polycentric Evaluation (Brown et al, 2020). Derived from research carried out in Europe and on the island of Ireland, Martin's lecture provides an overview of the potential for educational networks and community-based educational evaluation as a tool for improving educational effectiveness and outcomes in communities and collectively in entire education systems. Lessons to be learned on the island of Ireland, within this, the hindering and facilitating (F) actors that affect the quality and efficacy of Educational Networks and community-based Evaluation will also be explored.

Martin Brown is Head of the School of Policy and Practice at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University (DCU) and Co-Director at EQI – The Centre for Evaluation Quality and Inspection, also based at DCU. He is an Expert Evaluator to the European Commission, advisor to the Teaching Council of Ireland and an adjunct faculty member of the Centre for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment at the University of Illinois. He has planned and led evaluations in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Europe and the Middle East; working for, among others, the European Commission, Dept. of Education and Skills (Ireland), the State Education Development Agency (Latvia), and the United Arab Emirates government. He has received two all Island SCOTENS Awards (2018/2020) for outstanding research in Teacher Education and has received the President of DCU Gold medals for Research Impact and Teaching and Learning (2020). In 2021 he also received the President of DCU Gold medal for Civic Engagement. Research Interests include Comparative Education, Culturally Responsive Evaluation. School and Community Evaluation, Professional Learning Networks, Policy Influences in Education and Inclusion in Education.

This event will be held online via Zoom.