Niall Seery
Niall began his academic career in the Department of Education and Professional Studies at the University of Limerick in 2003 teaching on the first PGCE programme in technology education. He then joined the then Manufacturing and Operations Engineering Department where he took responsibility for teaching on the Concurrent undergraduate initial teacher education programmes (Materials and Engineering Technology Education and Materials and Construction Technology Education). Niall has taught Design and Communication Graphics, Process Technology and graphical and engineering pedagogics at both postgraduate and undergraduate level.
Over the past number of years Niall has been proactive in programme review and development. Niall’s PhD, which was awarded in 2005, explored the specific learning characteristics of engineering students and the efficacy of aligning teaching and learning strategies. The resultant questions surrounding constructive alignment led his research interests towards exploring the definition of subject content knowledge within design driven education.
From 2003 to 2005 Niall acted as co-principal investigator on the CAD in schools research project, concluding in a national report that was jointly funded by the National Council for Technology in Education (NCTE) and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) . The project investigated the use of feature based parametric modelling software in Irish Second Level schools, as a precursor to the introduction and implementation of Design and Communication Graphics at Senior Cycle. In 2010 Niall established and is currently the director of the Technology Education Research Group at the University of Limerick. This group housed in the Department of Design and Manufacturing Technology aims to advance technological education and support the continuous development of practitioners, initial teacher education, and second level pupils. Niall actively reviews for a number of international research conferences and is involved in a number of collaborative research projects. To-date, Niall has supervised three PhD students and one Masters Student to completion. He is actively engaged in postgraduate supervision and is focused on developing the strategic direction of the TERG research group.
