Research Clusters

Active Schools Active Communities

Co-Chairs

Dr. Sarahjane Belton Dublin City University, Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sarahjane Belton is a Lecturer in Physical Education and Physical Activity at Dublin City University. She has a BSc in Physical education and Maths, and a PhD in physical activity measurement in young people. Sarahjane is involved in a range of studies at Dublin City University, in collaboration with partners both nationally and internationally. Her research area centers mainly on physical activity and sedentary behavior in youth; including physical activity, sedentary, physical fitness, and fundamental movement skill measurement, and intervention development and trial evaluation. Her work has also been concerned with understanding factors associated with regular physical activity participation in youth, including physical elements such as cardiovascular fitness and body composition, but also psychological and psycho-social factors such as barriers and motivators for physical activity, self esteem and self efficacy, attitudes, and levels of self-determination. She leads the Y-PATH (Youth-Physical Activity Towards Health) research programme at DCU, which was established in 2010. Y-PATH is a research informed and evidence based intervention targetting increased physical activuty and fundamental movement skill levels of youth (see http://www.dcu.ie/shhp/y_path.shtml for more information). More recently Sarahjane has started researching in the area of adapted physical activity, again mainly in the areas of physical activity measurement and intervention development.

Dr. Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Mary Immaculate College, Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Déirdre Ní Chróinín is a physical education teacher educator at the primary/ elementary level. Her current research explores children’s experiences in physical education, physical activity and sport settings with particular emphasis on promoting meaningful lifelong engagement. Déirdre is the co-chair of the Active Schools/ Active Communities Research Cluster. She is also co-ordinator of the Teacher Educator Self-Study Initiative (TESSI) at Mary Immaculate College. She has 12 peer-review publications focused on physical education.

Facilitating Learning through Teaching and Coaching

Co-Chairs

Dr Missy Parker, University of Limerick, Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Missy Parker serves as co-chair of the Facilitating Learning through Teaching and Coaching cluster.  Missy arrived at the University of Limerick in the autumn of 2013 as a Lecturer in the Physical Education and Sport Sciences Department from the University of Northern Colorado.  Her scholarly areas of interest include accessing teacher and student voice, the professional learning of teachers and teacher educators, the study of constructivist learning, and the pedagogies that support that learning.  She has been professionally active in conducting on-going professional development serving for multiple school districts in the US and Ireland.  She loves to hike and paddle and is thoroughly enjoying exploring her new home of Ireland.

Dr Daniel Tindall, University of Limerick, Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Daniel Tindall serves as co-chair of the Facilitating Learning through Teaching and Coaching cluster. His teaching, research, and professional service is focused on teaching and teacher education in physical education, sport and adapted physical education; Specifically, Daniel has a deep interest in the attitudes and perceptions of pre-service PE teachers and the facilitation of inclusion with the Irish educational system. His current research projects focus on the physical activity levels of children with disabilities as well as parent perceptions of the IEP process as it relates to PE in Ireland.

Talent Development

Chair:    

Dr Mark Campbell, University of Limerick, Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Mark Campbell joined the PESS department in January 2011 as a Lecturer in Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology.  Prior to joining the department, Mark lectured in the School of Health & Human Performance at Dublin City University. He has a B.A (2002) and a Ph.D. (2006) in Psychology from University College Dublin. Mark's doctoral thesis was titled "An Empirical Investigation of Expertise in Golf Putting and Green-Reading". This research was funded with an IRCHSS scholarship from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Mark's teaching and research interests focus on two main areas: motor cognition and applied sport psychology interventions. Mark's research to date has focused on trying to understand cognitive and perceptual expertise of elite athletes. Mark is the founding chairman of the Division of Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology of the Psychological Society of Ireland and has recently delivered a keynote address to the Psychological Society of Irelands Student Congress. Mark has utilised mixed methodologies in examining the cognitive processes underlying expert performance from qualitative (interviews, focus groups) to quantitative (laboratory and filed studies). Specifically he has used eye-tracking technology to examine visual attentional control in expert's decision-making skills, preparation for action and subsequent performance execution. He is also interested in mental skills training and sport psychology interventions with athletes and coaches.

Research Areas

This research programme entails phenomenological analysis of coaches and/or stakeholders understanding and application of expertise in an Irish sport context. Particular emphasis on but not restricted to the following-- Irish multi-sport sample, qualitative methodology, expert-performance approach and multi-disciplinary perspectives (sport psychology, sports pedagogy, coaching science).

 

Our Mission

To use high-quality, multi-disciplinary and multi-entity research to shape, influence and inform policy and practice relating to advancing the health and well-being of populations in the areas of physical education, sport, physical activity and health.

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