Papers by Siobhán Nic Fhlannchadha
Higher Education
Worldwide, HEIs strive to provide the best possible training for their PGRs, the next generation ... more Worldwide, HEIs strive to provide the best possible training for their PGRs, the next generation of researchers. PGRs engagement is crucial for a successful completion of their training, however, research on the experiences of PGRs is limited. Moreover, the number of international PGRs has increased steadily over the last decade, which poses the question whether international PGRs have different engagement levels compared to local PGRs. Therefore, thus study is aimed at filling this research gap by investigating the mechanisms that influence the engagement of these groups of students. The paper focuses on the dimensions of (1) students’ engagement with the supervisor, (2) their engagement within the department, and (3) their cognitive engagement, by taking a mixed-method approach that draws on the Irish PGR StudentSurvey.ie 2019 data and 14 semi-structured interviews conducted with PGRs at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2021. The findings indicate that differences in engagement bet...
Higher Education
Worldwide, HEIs strive to provide the best possible training for their PGRs, the next generation ... more Worldwide, HEIs strive to provide the best possible training for their PGRs, the next generation of researchers. PGRs engagement is crucial for a successful completion of their training, however, research on the experiences of PGRs is limited. Moreover, the number of international PGRs has increased steadily over the last decade, which poses the question whether international PGRs have different engagement levels compared to local PGRs. Therefore, thus study is aimed at filling this research gap by investigating the mechanisms that influence the engagement of these groups of students. The paper focuses on the dimensions of (1) students’ engagement with the supervisor, (2) their engagement within the department, and (3) their cognitive engagement, by taking a mixed-method approach that draws on the Irish PGR StudentSurvey.ie 2019 data and 14 semi-structured interviews conducted with PGRs at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2021. The findings indicate that differences in engagement bet...
Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, 2019
While there has been considerable policy attention given to educational disadvantage in the Irish... more While there has been considerable policy attention given to educational disadvantage in the Irish context in recent years, evidence on the educational experiences, attainment, and progression of young people with experience of living in alternative care settings (e.g. foster care, residential care) remains limited. International literature suggests that young people with such ‘care-experience’ typically have lower attainment and progress to higher education at lower rates than their majority population peers. This brief paper focuses on one of these issues, the question of how care-experienced young people in Ireland fare in accessing opportunities in higher education. It presents some very preliminary evidence from an initial analysis of a small dataset related to care-experienced applicants to the Higher Education Access Route (HEAR) programme, a higher education access scheme that offers places on a reduced-points basis to school leavers under the age of 23 from socio-economicall...
Global Student Engagement, 2022
Language and Education, 2019
Assessing children's proficiency in a minority language: exploring the relationships between home... more Assessing children's proficiency in a minority language: exploring the relationships between home language exposure, test performance and teacher and parent ratings of school-age Irish-English bilinguals, Language and Education,
Behavior Research Methods, 2015
We present a new set of subjective age-ofacquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 ... more We present a new set of subjective age-ofacquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2016
Languages
The Irish language is an indigenous minority language undergoing accelerated convergence with Eng... more The Irish language is an indigenous minority language undergoing accelerated convergence with English against a backdrop of declining intergenerational transmission, universal bilingualism, and exposure to large numbers of L2 speakers. Recent studies indicate that the interaction of complex morphosyntax and variable levels of consistent input result in some aspects of Irish grammar having a long trajectory of acquisition or not being fully acquired. Indeed, for the small group of children who are L1 speakers of Irish, identifying which “end point” of this trajectory is appropriate against which to assess these children’s acquisition of Irish is difficult. In this study, data were collected from 135 proficient adult speakers and 306 children (aged 6–13 years) living in Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht) communities, using specially designed measures of grammatical gender. The results show that both quality and quantity of input appear to impact on acquisition of this aspect of Irish morphosy...
First Language
An in-depth examination of the acquisition of grammatical gender has not previously been conducte... more An in-depth examination of the acquisition of grammatical gender has not previously been conducted for Irish, an endangered indigenous language now typically acquired simultaneously with English, or as L2. Children acquiring Irish must contend with the opacity of the Irish gender system and the plurifunctionality of the inflections used to mark it, while also experiencing early exposure to the majority language and variability in amount and consistency of adult input in Irish. Data were collected from 306 participants aged 6-13 years, including information on home language background which allowed children to be categorised as being from homes which were Irish-dominant, bilingual, or English-dominant. Novel measures of receptive and productive use of grammatical gender were developed to test children's understanding and production of gender marking. A standard multiple regression conducted which accounted for 39.5% of the variance showed that language background was the strongest predictor of accuracy in marking grammatical gender assignment and agreement. The later stages of acquisition of semantic and grammatical gender have not previously been investigated in Irish, and the implications for researchers, policy makers, educators and parents are discussed.
First Language
An in-depth examination of the acquisition of grammatical gender has not previously been conducte... more An in-depth examination of the acquisition of grammatical gender has not previously been conducted for Irish, an endangered indigenous language now typically acquired simultaneously with English, or as L2. Children acquiring Irish must contend with the opacity of the Irish gender system and the plurifunctionality of the inflections used to mark it, while also experiencing early exposure to the majority language and variability in amount and consistency of adult input in Irish. Data were collected from 306 participants aged 6-13 years, including information on home language background which allowed children to be categorised as being from homes which were Irish-dominant, bilingual, or English-dominant. Novel measures of receptive and productive use of grammatical gender were developed to test children's understanding and production of gender marking. A standard multiple regression conducted which accounted for 39.5% of the variance showed that language background was the strongest predictor of accuracy in marking grammatical gender assignment and agreement. The later stages of acquisition of semantic and grammatical gender have not previously been investigated in Irish, and the implications for researchers, policy makers, educators and parents are discussed.
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Papers by Siobhán Nic Fhlannchadha