Perfil de Joanne Banks, PhD
Research areas focus on special educational needs (SEN) and inclusive education. Joanne Banks is particularly interested in the social and contextual factors influencing SEN identification, disproportionality in special education, the link between teacher expectations and academic achievement for this group of students and the everyday school experiences for students with different types of SEN.
She is currently principal investigator on research examining special classes in Ireland funded by the National Council for Special Education. She has recently published A Study on the Prevalence of Special Educational Needs which examines issues around the process of SEN identification in Irish schools and the ways in which resources are assigned to children or young people with SEN.
Since starting at the ESRI a major focus of her work has been on student experiences in post-primary education. She has a keen interest in the process of tracking and curriculum differentiation and published the first systematic study of student experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied programme. Using data from the Post Primary Longitudinal Study she has worked on student experiences of sixth year and is particularly interested in the impact of high stakes testing on teaching, learning, student wellbeing and outcomes. She has developed a keen interest in student transitions from school and is currently working on the Leaving School in Ireland study which looks at the post-school experiences of the cohort of young people who took previously part in the Post primary Longitudinal Study.
Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Child Indicators Research, British Journal of Sociology of Education, European Journal of Special Needs Education and Irish Educational Studies.
