IPPN

Gene Mehigan is Principal Lecturer at Coláiste Mhuire, Marino Institute of Education, with leadership responsibilities for Literacy and Continuing Professional Development. As Head of the English Department his lecturing responsibilities include the teaching of English methods to undergraduate and post graduate students. His research interests are in the teaching of reading, education provision in disadvantaged settings and in teacher education. Much of his early research into the teaching of reading was carried out while teaching in Darndale Junior School. More recently his research has focused on the impact of the English Language curriculum on teaching reading in the early years in primary school. Prior to joining the staff at Marino he worked as coordinator of the Common In-service Remedial Course in Church of Ireland College Rathmines and with the Primary Curriculum Support Programme. Currently a member of the national executive of the Reading Association of Ireland he is also a past president of the Association of Remedial Teachers of Ireland (ARTI). In recent years he has worked with the World Bank as a consultant on the development of a sector wide approach for the reform of literacy education in The Gambia, closer to home has served as a member of the Project Team on Child Literacy and Social Inclusion for the National Economic and Social Forum.

Dr. Martin Gleeson is a teacher educator in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick where he specialises in Literacy Education. He accumulated a broad range of experience as both class and learning support teacher in diverse educational settings during his twenty three years in the primary school system.
        In 2004 he was awarded a Ph.D by the University of Limerick for his thesis entitled “A Longitudinal Study on the Impact of Integrated Early Literacy Instruction on the Reading Development of Children in an Irish Primary School.”  This study, drawing on international best practice, promotes the importance of reading high quality children’s literature, developing effective home-school reading partnerships, phonemic awareness training, emergent writing, systematic phonics instruction and daily meaningful reading experience to support children’s early literacy development.
      Martin has presented at a range of national and international conferences including,   I.L.S.A., R.A.I. European Reading Conferences and International Reading Association Annual Conferences. He has provided Continued Professional Development for teachers on a diverse range of literacy related topics, including, CAPER (Children and Parents Enjoying Reading), The Development of Children’s Phonological Awareness Skills, Emergent Writing, Developing Response to Fiction, Supporting the Older Inexperienced Reader and Assessment of Children’s Reading Development.
For the past two years Martin has collaborated with Dr. Anne Courtney of the University of Hartford, Connecticut and nine schools in the Munster area in the development of a strategic approach to comprehension instruction resulting in the publication of a teacher’s manual entitled “Building Bridges of Understanding: A Whole School Approach to Children’s Comprehension Development”. This approach has been adopted by many schools throughout the country and was presented at the I.R.A. Annual Convention in Chicago in April 2010.
Martin was President of the RAI in 2009-10 and is a current executive committee member.

Dr. Pasi Sahlberg is Director General of CIMO (in the Ministry of Education and Culture) in Helsinki, Finland.  He is also an educator, researcher and school improvement activist.  He has experience in educational reforms, training teachers and leaders, coaching schools to change and advising education policy-makers around the world.  Pasi has worked in schools, universities, state-level administration (Ministry of Education in Finland) and international development organisations (World Bank, OECD, European Union).  His main areas of interest are educational change, school improvement, cooperative learning, and global education policies.  He delivers several international keynote presentations each year and has published over 100 articles, chapters and books, among them "Educational change in Finland" (2010), “Rethinking accountability in a knowledge society” (2010), “Creativity and innovation through lifelong learning” (2009), "Should 'failing' students repeat the grade?" (2008); "The role of international organisations in fighting corruption in education" (2008), "Education Policies for raising student learning: The Finnish approach" (2007), "Education reform for raising economic competitiveness" (2006).  His forthcoming book is titled "Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?” Pasi earned PhD from the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) in 1996 and he is Assistant Editor of Journal of Educational Change and Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu.