Other Academic (Peer- reviewed publications)

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Using Peircean abduction to understand teacher mentoring
(Routledge, 2022-05-15) De Paor, Cathal
Lesson observation is frequently used in teacher induction programmes to support newly-qualified teachers in their reflection and classroom enquiry. This article uses an elaboration of Peirce’s abduction to illustrate how the post-observation conversation supports a teacher’s reflection on her teaching, and in particular, her teaching of language to young children. It shows that abduction involves an expert-like intuition, where the interaction and co-enquiry with the advisor was crucial. The analytical framework used is based on six modes of abductive reasoning or inference that deal with potential or possibility, three modes of induction dealing with actuality, and one mode of deduction focusing on rules and regulations. In a context of lifelong learning, with emphasis on teacher learning across the professional lifespan, the article shows how newly-qualified teachers can be supported in using abductive reasoning and engage in worthwhile classroom enquiry. The article contributes to edusemiotics, a recently developed direction in educational theory that explores the philosophical specifics of semiotics in educational contexts.
The Curriculum in an era of global reform: Bobbitt’s ideas on efficiency and teacher knowledge
(Routledge, 2021-02-12) De Paor, Cathal
Over a hundred years later, The Curriculum by John Franklin Bobbitt continues to be relevant for understanding contemporary issues in education. One issue has been the association with elements of reform such as scripted curriculum programmes and high-stakes standardized testing. This article argues that while Bobbitt’s message was one of scientific management and efficiency, this was to be pursued in a particular kind of way, quite distinct from that used in industry, and involving an extended role for the teacher. Bobbitt sought to create the conditions for a more humanizing education experience, in the pursuit of the greater human welfare and a more democratic society—quite different from the outcomes inherent in contemporary global educational reform. The article offers a close reading of The Curriculum, drawing in particular on Knoll’s recent work on the concept of efficiency, together with a typology of the kind of knowledge which teachers need to teach well. Using this twin framework puts Bobbitt’s legacy in a different light, and shows the need to take account of the full range of his ideas. Doing so can offer better insight into challenges in education over a hundred years later.
Credit allocation and programmes design: insights from metaphor
(Routledge, 2020-10-01) De Paor, Cathal
Volume is the dominant metaphor underlying the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). Credits are used to ‘express the volume of learning based on the defined learning outcomes and their associated workload’, with the latter based on volume of student effort. But the convenience of volume can leave the first part overlooked, i.e. ‘the defined learning outcomes’ and in particular their relative importance or relative weight for achieving the overall programme outcomes. Paying attention to issues of relative weight and volume at module design stage is necessary to ensure overall programme balance and coherence. The second part of the article uses metaphor analysis to draw attention to this. Density, based on volume and weight, provides a more satisfactory metaphor for credit allocation, drawing attention to programme substance, which is what ultimately matters.
Measurement and prevalence of adult physical activity levels in Arab countries
(Elsevier, 2021-07) Martin, Rosemarie; Murtagh, Elaine M; Rmeileh, Niveen Abu; Shalash, Aisha
Physical activity (PA) has a profound effect on health. The World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that physical inactivity is the fourth leading global risk for mortality, responsible for raising the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and affecting countries across all income groups.1 It is estimated that worldwide physical inactivity causes 6% of the burden of disease from coronary heart disease, 7% of type 2 diabetes, 10% of breast cancer and 10% of colon cancer.2 While globally more than one-third of adults are estimated to not accumulate sufficient PA to meet public health guidelines,3 there are large differences between regions. The highest prevalence of inactivity is seen in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (43.2%) and the Americas (43.3%).3 The aforementioned burden of NCDs associated with physical inactivity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region is 8% of coronary heart diseases, 10% of type 2 diabetes, 14% of breast cancer and 14% of colon cancer.2 However, life expectancy in the region has increased from 51 years of age in 1970 to almost 70 years in 2016; the rapid rise in NCDs has been described as alarming.4 The Arab world and Greater Middle Eastern region are forecasted to experience a further rise in preventable deaths due to NCDs if no serious action is taken.5 Promoting PA will form a key role in preventing and treating NCDs,6 and this requires an understanding of the challenges associated with this task across regions. The WHO has set a target of a 15% relative reduction in the global prevalence of physical inactivity in adults and adolescents by 2030.6 This is supported by an earlier call to action by the WHO Regional Office for the Easter Mediterranean.7 Alongside commonly cited barriers to PA globally, specific issues experienced by those living in Arab countries have been identified. Physical obstacles (e.g., hot weather, unfriendly built environment) and low value placed on PA (e.g., car culture, physical exertion associated with lower status occupations, parental preferences) translate into low interest and motivation to engage in PA.8 That said, socially and culturally congruent interventions to promote PA in Arab countries are increasing.9 A thorough grasp of current levels of PA and ongoing monitoring and surveillance is essential if gains in population-level PA are to be realised. The aforementioned global action plan encourages countries to strengthen reporting of physical inactivity.6 Recent years have seen a rise in the number of studies examining the prevalence of PA in Arab countries across the Middle East and North Africa. A synthesis of studies across countries and an evaluation of the instruments used to attain prevalence estimates are warranted. Thus, the present systematic review sought to (1) examine the reported prevalence of sufficient PA among adults in Arab countries and (2) determine the use of validated instruments for assessing PA.
Transatlantic exchange, urban development and heterogeneous engineering in the west of Ireland: Belmullet's unbuilt railways, c. 1820-1920 (Pre Published)
(Liverpool University Press, 2021-09) Butler, Richard
This chapter focuses on technological and geo-spatial dreams of modernity through a study of the unexecuted proposals for developing the town of Belmullet in Co. Mayo as a transatlantic packet station. It adds to the growing literature on north Atlantic exchange and the development of early steamship and railway routes in Ireland. Theoretically, it engages with the concept of Ireland as a functional networked unit within a transnational geo-political infrastructure of certain fixities and flows, and of railways as a core new technology in the development of the nineteenth-century state. The scheme’s proponents believed that Belmullet, in one of the poorest and least developed outer edges of pre-Famine Ireland, could become an infrastructural node of national and international importance. This chapter focuses on the advocacy of landlords, ‘boosters’, and especially engineers for Belmullet’s development.
Cork’s courthouses, the landed elite and the Rockite rebellion: architectural responses to agrarian violence, 1820-27 (Pre published)
(Liverpool University Press, 2016-06-29) Butler, Richard
Excerpt from pre-published version of Crime, Violence and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century published by Liverpool University Press: The study of architectural history has been fertile ground for revisionist approaches in recent years. In particular, the concept that the neo-classical style of architecture, in ascendancy in late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century Europe, should be understood as the language of a small coterie of international cultural and economic elites, has come under sustained criticism. As Kathleen James-Chakraborty comments, a shift of focus from the ‘production’ to the ‘consumption’ of neo-classical architecture (though the argument could as well be applied to any other architectural style) has revealed counter-narratives that highlight aspects of material culture, class, and gender, all previously under-researched. Far from the preserve of an aristocratic elite, as Conor Lucey and Andrew Tierney have shown in their respective case-studies, the adoption of neo-classical architecture in Ireland formed part of a demarcation of class bound up with concepts of expressing or appropriating ‘politeness’ and ‘gentility’. The great economic and technological advances of the period, coupled with the availability of new ‘faux’ building materials such as Coade stone and a more vigorous print culture, led to an emboldened and discerning middle class of architectural patrons at the same time as the financial cost of emulating ‘elite’ neo-classical began to fall.
Catholic power and the Irish city: modernity, religion, and planning in Galway, 1944-49 (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-07) Butler, Richard
A major town planning dispute between church and state in Galway in the 1940s over the location for a new school provides a lens for rethinking Ireland's distinctive engagement with modernity. Using town planning and urban governance lenses, this article argues that existing scholarship on the postwar Irish Catholic Church overstates its hegemonic power. In analyzing the dispute, it critiques the undue focus within European town-planning studies on the state and on the supposedly “rational” agendas of mid-century planners, showing instead how religious entities forged parallel paths of urban modernity and urban governance. It thus adds an Irish and an urban-planning dimension to existing debates within religious history about urbanization and secularization, showing how adaptive the Irish Catholic Church was to high modernity. Finally, with its focus on a school building, it brings a built environment angle into studies of education policy in Ireland. In seeking to revisit major historiographical debates within town planning, religious history, and studies of urban modernity, the article makes extensive use of the recently opened papers of Bishop Michael Browne of Galway, a noted public intellectual within the Irish Catholic Church and a European expert on canon law.
Building a Catholic church in 1950s Ireland: architecture, rhetoric and landscape in Dromore, Co. Cork, 1952-56 (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-02-10) Butler, Richard
This article explores the intellectual culture of Catholic architectural production in 1950s Ireland through the study of a church-building project in rural West Cork. It analyses the phenomenon of the Irish ‘church-building priest’ in terms of their socio-economic background, fundraising abilities, and position within rural communities – in the context of significant rural emigration and economic stagnation. It also considers the role that the Irish countryside played in conditioning clerical understandings of architectural style and taste, and priests’ political readings of the rural landscape. Furthermore, it explores the phenomenon of Marianism in church design and ornamentation around the time of the international ‘Marian Year’ of 1954, and the political meanings of the rhetoric employed by clerics at church consecration ceremonies. The article concludes with reflections on social and economic aspects of Irish rural life and religious expression in a decade primarily understood as one of cultural insularity and conservative Catholicism.
The afterlives of Galway jail, "difficult" heritage, and the Maamtrasna Murders: representations of an Irish urban space, 1882-2018 (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-05-03) Butler, Richard
This article explores the spatial history and ‘afterlives’ of Galway jail, where an innocent man, Myles Joyce, was executed in 1882 following his conviction for the Maamtrasna murders; in 2018 he was formally pardoned by President Michael D. Higgins. The article traces how the political and cultural meanings of this incident were instrumentalised in the building of Ireland's last Catholic cathedral on the site of the former Galway jail. It analyses how the site was depicted – in different ways and at different moments – as one of justice, of injustice, of triumph, and of redemption. It investigates how these different legacies were instrumentalised – or at times ignored – by Irish nationalists and later by the Catholic bishop of Galway, Michael Browne. It uses Joyce's execution to explore the site's legacy, an incident that at times dominated its representations but at other moments faded from prominence. The article situates the former jail site within theoretical writings on memorialisation, ‘difficult’ heritage, and studies of architectural demolition, while also commenting on mid twentieth-century Irish Catholic politics and culture.
“The radicals in these reform times”: politics, grand juries and Ireland’s unbuilt assize courthouses, 1800-45 (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2015-02-11) Butler, Richard
It is the aim, in this article, to identify the reasons why certain designs for courthouses in early-nineteenth-century Ireland remained unexecuted, and to do so by analysing surviving drawings and placing them in the political context at this time of Irish local government and of the efforts of Westminster politicians to institute reform. The funding and erection of courthouses were managed by grand juries, an archaic form of local government which gave few rights to smaller taxpayers and was widely perceived as an unaccountable institution associated with the ancien régime. In addition to hosting court sittings, courthouses were used by these grand juries for their private meetings and functions. By exploring the agendas and pretensions of these bodies, and by looking at the fluctuating availability of funding sources that were needed to initiate building work, I will argue through a series of Irish case studies that a renewed focus on elite patronage and its associated politics allows a new insight into courthouse building, which places less emphasis than is often the case on, for example, the role played by the changing legal profession in the architectural development of the courthouse.
Evaluation of public perceptions of authenticity of urban heritage under the conservation paradigm of historic urban landscape: a case study of the Five Avenues Historic District in Tianjin, China (Pre published)
(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Butler, Richard; Liu, Tianhang; Zhang, Chunyan
Cities are the carrier of culture and collective memory of a place. Nowadays, however, there are already globally developed frameworks for the conservation of tangible urban heritage with the loss of historic meaning, which means, the public (including local residents and tourists) can hardly perceive the authenticity of urban heritage in the modern society. As a result, few of them can understand the identity and historical layering process of the city. From the perspective of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), this paper sets out the experience and approaches of public perceptions of authenticity through literature review and comments data mining, and takes the Five Avenues Historic District in Tianjin as a case study in order to propose strategies for enhancing public perceptions of authenticity of urban heritage. By doing this, the public can have a better understanding of the meaning of urban heritage, which would contribute to its distinctive identity, as well as the management of change.
Planning for bicycles in the Irish city: a brief history (Pre published)
(Irish Planning Institute, 2020) Butler, Richard
In this short article I will summarise recent research on cycling in urban Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. I will briefly comment on how cycling was discussed by Irish town planners in the past, and how it was discussed in Irish newspapers. In aiming to bridge a gap between the historical and the planning professions, I hope that some more knowledge of what happened in the past will allow planners to make more informed decisions about contemporary issues.
Urban governance and prison building in pre-Famine Ireland, 1820-1845 (Pre published)
(Routledge, 2020) Butler, Richard
This chapter focuses on urban governance, urban agency, and civil society with reference to the construction of new prisons in Irish towns in the early nineteenth century. It investigates how civil society and central government were involved in the physical transformation of these small towns. By analysing the mechanics by which new prisons were planned and built, it probes the power relationships between the national prison inspectors, the voluntary Association for the Improvement of Prisons and of Prison Discipline in Ireland, local government and urban elites. It argues that despite their relatively weak position as government employees who only occasionally visited provincial towns, the inspectors were nevertheless remarkably successful in their lobbying efforts to initiate new prison building projects. To do this, they relied on appeals to civil society, won the support of assize judges, pitted neighbouring towns against each other, and used the new information networks provided by the provincial press and their own annual reports to force local urban elites into action. This chapter shows an under-appreciated and rather early Irish ‘mixed economy of welfare’ operating within and between metropolitan and provincial urban centres in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Building the Irish courthouse and prison: a political history, 1750-1850 (Pre published)
(Cork University Press, 2020) Butler, Richard
This book is the first national history of the building of some of Ireland’s most important historic public buildings. Focusing on the former assize courthouses and county gaols, it tells a political history of how they were built, who paid for them, and the effects they had on urban development in Ireland. Using extensive archival sources, it delves in unprecedented detail into the politics and personalities of county grand jurors, Protestant landed society, government prison inspectors, charities, architects, and engineers, who together oversaw a wave of courthouse and prison construction in Ireland in an era of turbulent domestic and international change. It investigates the extent to which these buildings can be seen as the legacy of the British or imperial state, especially after the Act of Union, and thus contributes to ongoing debates within post-colonial studies regarding the built environment. Richly illustrated with over 300 historic drawings, photographs and maps, this book analyses how and why these historic buildings came to exist. It discusses crime, violence and political and agrarian unrest in Ireland during the years when Protestant elites commissioned such extensive new public architecture. The book will be of interest to academic and popular audiences curious to learn more about Irish politics, culture, society and especially its rich architectural heritage.
The Anglo-Indian architect Walter Sykes George (1881-1962): a modernist follower of Lutyens (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2012) Butler, Richard
Walter Sykes George (1881–1962) (Fig. 1) was a remarkable Anglo-Indian architect. Obituaries in Indian and British journals cast him as a ‘Renaissance’ man: an artist, Byzantine archaeologist, architect, town planner, philosopher, historian, public intellectual, humanist, Modernist, even an Indian nationalist. He features prominently in one recent history of modern architecture in India, a rare accolade for an ‘Anglo-Indian’ architect — an architect born in Britain who practised and lived for much of his life in India.
British solutions to Irish problems: representations of Ireland in the British architectural press, 1837-53’ (Pre published)
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014-05-10) Butler, Richard
Existing scholarship on representations of Ireland in the British press has overlooked a subset of nineteenth–century publications: architectural periodicals. By analysing their coverage of Irish issues over a fifteen year period, including industrial exhibitions staged in Cork and Dublin, this article challenges the notion that the immediate post–famine years were a period of diminished interest in Irish affairs. Architectural periodicals suggested that Ireland’s problems could only be solved through greater Anglicization, as shown in their depictions of romanticised Irish peasants, government–sponsored engineering projects, and the construction of Irish workhouses.
Irish urban history: an agenda (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Butler, Richard; Hanna, Erika
Modern Irish history is urban history. It is a story of the transferral of a populace from rural settlements to small towns and cities; of the discipline and regulation of society through new urban spaces; of the creation of capital through the construction of buildings and the sale of property. The history of Ireland has been overwhelmingly the history of land, but too often the emphasis has been on the field rather than the street, and on the small farmer instead of the urban shopkeeper. But the same questions of property run throughout Irish urban history from the early modern period to the contemporary, as speculators, businesses and government have attempted to convert land into profit, creating new buildings, streets and spaces, and coming into conflict with each other and other vested interests. Indeed, as recent work on Irish cities has shown, a turn to the urban history of Ireland provides a framework and a methodology for writing a textured and complex history of Ireland's distinctive engagement with modernity.
Rethinking the origins of the British Prisons Act of 1835: Ireland and the development of central-government prison inspection, 1820-35 (Pre published)
(Cambridge University Press, 2016-09) Butler, Richard
While the introduction of central-government inspectors for prisons in a British act of 1835 has been seen as a key Whig achievement of the 1830s, the Irish precedent enacted by Charles Grant, a liberal Tory chief secretary, in the early 1820s, has gone unnoticed by scholars. The article sets out to trace the Irish prefiguring of this measure and, in the process, to consider prison reform in the United Kingdom in the early nineteenth century in a more transnational manner. A new analysis of the critical years between 1823 and 1835 in both Britain and Ireland based on a detailed examination of parliamentary inquiries and legislation shows how developments in the two countries overlapped and how reforms in one jurisdiction affected the other. This article explores the channels through which this exchange of knowledge and ideas occurred – both in parliament and through interlinked penal-reform philanthropic societies in both countries. This article also highlights inadequacies with the theory supported by some scholars that Ireland functioned as a laboratory for British social reform at this time, and instead suggests a more fluid exchange of ideas in both directions at different times.
Comparative research using secondary data analysis: Exploring Europe’s changing food consumption practices (Pre-published version)
(Sage, 2018) Healy, Amy
Secondary data analysis can make it possible to research questions with high-quality data that would not otherwise be possible, especially for an early career researcher. For my PhD research, I investigated change in food consumption and associated practices across Europe. Historically, as presented by Teuteberg and Flandrin, European food consumption would have varied significantly based on region and country, with Northern Europe relying more heavily on dairy and meat, and Southern Europe relying more on vegetables and legumes. With industrialization and globalization, I wanted to determine whether national differences were still salient or if other factors, such as class and gender, were more statistically interesting for exploring differences in consumption. Given data availability and historical food cuisines (or lack thereof), I used four waves of household budget survey data (1985-2005) from a subset of European countries, specifically Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France. Given the scope of the project, both over time and cross-nationally, it was necessary to use secondary data analysis for this research. However, there were challenges that took time to resolve. The data preparation was iterative; coding of one country often meant recoding of others. However, coding, analysis, recoding and more analysis of the data sets for equivalence and descriptive statistics exposed trends and patterns that existed within the data sets. It became obvious that country differences were still important. What also emerged was that older people in Italy and France have very different food expenditure patterns than older people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, which indicate different food consumption practices. These differences coincide with country differences that have been discussed in nutritional literature and named, “the Mediterranean diet” and “the French paradox”, and provide more insight into the health differences in older people that exist between the researched countries.

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