Dr Joan Kiely CroppedDr. Joan Kiely is Dean of Education at Marino Institute of Education, Dublin where she is responsible for the management of the B.Ed programme and the B.Sc programme in Early Childhood Education. Joan also leads the Masters in Early Childhood Education at Marino, a programme that has nurtured and developed educational leaders and academics in the sphere of early years’ education in recent years. Joan worked as a primary school teacher in North County Dublin for twenty years and then as a teacher educator for fifteen years. Research interests include supporting parents to develop their children’s literacy in the home, play in the early years, children’s oral language development and early years’ pedagogy. Joan has designed and taught numerous professional development courses for teachers on the subject of play and oral language development, on both face-to-face and online courses. She has also written course material for the new Primary Language Curriculum in Ireland (2015).
Joan has worked with children, parents and teachers in different enriching educational contexts, one of those contexts being The Storytime Project (2010 to present day), a dialogic story-reading initiative to empower and support parents in developing their children’s oral language through story-reading. Joan has spoken about her work on The Storytime Project at academic conferences throughout Europe as well as here in Ireland.

The current research project, and the focus of her talks at the IPPN Deputy Principals’ Conference 2019 and the Principals' Conference 2020, is Parental involvement, engagement and partnership in their children's learning during the primary school years. The research is a collaborative project with Dr. Leah O’ Toole (Maynooth University), Dr. Maja Haals Brosnan (Marino Institute of Education), Emma O’ Brien (Marino Institute of Education), Cliona O’ Keeffe (St. Nicholas Montessori College) and Dr. Claire Marie Dunne (Marino Institute of Education). Findings and recommendations arising from the research will be shared, with a particular focus on children’s homework.

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