Paul Connolly
Biographic Data
| ID | 261065 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Connolly |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Connolly |
| SIGNATURE | CONNOLLY P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University Belfast |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9176-9592 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 196 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Rights of Very Young Children in the Digital Environment of the Family Home
As digital technologies have become increasingly embedded in daily family life, there has been a growing international concern about children's protection, provision and participation rights in a digital environment. Recognising this, the Committee on the Rights of the Child published General Comment No. 25 Children's Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment (CRC, 2021), giving detailed advice on implementation issues in this area and callin…
Using the talking album to elicit the views of young children in foster care regarding a reading intervention
There is wide ranging research that uses innovative methods to seek the views of children in out-of-home care. In the area of education, this group of children increasingly participate in research that involves various educational interventions (including book-gifting, tutoring, paired reading), that are designed to improve their educational attainment and achievements. Despite the overall growth in research evidence, there remains an absence of …
The effectiveness of book-gifting programmes to enhance the reading skills of children in care
There now exists a considerable body of international evidence demonstrating the consistently poor educational outcomes faced by children in care, that emerge early and worsen as children grow older, with the effects lasting longer term into adulthood. One popular intervention aimed at addressing this has been the use of book-gifting. However, there is limited evidence that this, on its own, is effective in improving reading outcomes for children…
The achievement gap
Despite extensive research on attainment grouping, the impact of attainment grouping on pupil attainment remains poorly understood and contested. This paper presents evidence from a study conducted with 2944 12–13 year olds, from 76 schools in England, who were allocated to between‐class attainment groups (‘setting’) in English and mathematics over the first 2 years of secondary schooling. After controlling for prior attainment, pupils in the top…
Comparing the effectiveness of two reciprocal reading comprehension interventions for primary school pupils in disadvantaged schools
BACKGROUND: Effective reading comprehension teaching is an aspiration of education systems across the world. Teaching incorporating reciprocal reading theory and evidence is an internationally popular approach for improving comprehension. AIMS: This paper uses two large cluster randomized controlled trials of similar reciprocal reading interventions implemented in different ways to compare their effectiveness. SAMPLE: The two interventions had th…
Less Screen Time, More Frequent Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Physical Activity are Associated with Greater Mental Wellbeing in Adolescents
Wellbeing declines during adolescence, for which the reasons are unclear. This analysis explored associations between wellbeing and multiple lifestyle, socioeconomic and school-level factors in young people. Data were collected as part of the Wellbeing in School (WiSe) survey of adolescent school children in Northern Ireland at age 13–14 years ( N = 1618; 49% female) and 15–16 years ( N = 1558; 50.5% female). Wellbeing was assessed using the shor…
Exploring the association between mental wellbeing, health-related quality of life, family affluence and food choice in adolescents
Young people choose energy-dense, nutrient-poor diets, yet understanding of potential determinants is limited. Associations between food choices, mental wellbeing, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and family affluence were explored to identify targets for intervention to promote dietary health and wellbeing in young people. Adolescents were recruited via post-primary schools in the UK and surveyed at two time-points when aged 13-14 years an…
Social Innovation and Social Work
In a national and international context where there is a concern about the effectiveness of social care services for children and families to address chronic, enduring social problems and where there are finite resources available, the concept of social innovation in social work policy and practice to address need in new ways is receiving increased attention. Whilst an attractive term, social innovation in child and family services is not without…
Assessing the reliability and validity of an outcomes star
Purpose This paper aims to assess the reliability, validity and use of the Family Star Plus, one of several Outcomes Stars increasingly used as part of outcomes-based accountability approaches in the delivery of family support services. The Family Star Plus measures progress towards effective parenting but a lack of evidence exists on its psychometric properties and suitability for use as an outcomes tool. Design/methodology/approach Based on dat…
The effectiveness of Nurture Groups in improving outcomes for young children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties in primary schools
Concerns have grown regarding the increased prevalence of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties observed in young children in primary school settings. Contributory factors are multiple and varied but one consistent emphasis has been on the negative effects of children’s poor attachments with significant others which, due to contextual factors, may not have developed sufficiently. Some groups of children are more at risk of not developing…
The impact of tracking by attainment on pupil self-confidence over time
The impact of self-fulfilling prophecy in education, and of attainment grouping on pupil self-perception, remain topics of longstanding debate, with important consequences for social in/justice. Focusing on self-confidence, this article draws on survey responses from 9,059 12-13 year olds who were tracked by subject (‘setting’). They provided survey responses when placed in ‘ability’ sets at the start of their secondary schooling, and again late …
The misallocation of students to academic sets in maths
Drawing upon data gathered from 9301 Year 7 students (12–13 years old) from 46 secondary schools in England, this study represents the first larger‐scale attempt to compare their actual set allocations in maths with the counterfactual position where their allocation to sets is based solely on their prior attainment at the end of primary school [using their Key Stage 2 (KS2) fine‐grained scores in maths]. Through such an analysis, the study found …
Teacher ‘quality’ and attainment grouping
The Letterbox Club book gifting intervention
Paving the way for the use of the SDQ in economic evaluations of school-based population health interventions
Initial evidence suggests the SDQ and CHU9D are related in some of their measurement properties. The mapping algorithm using five SDQ subscales was found to be optimal in predicting mean child health utility. Future research valuing changes in the SDQ scores would contribute to this research
Effects of a book gifting programme on literacy outcomes for foster children
A cluster randomised controlled trial of “Bookstart+”
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a free book gifting programme, called “Bookstart+”, in improving family reading outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – Bookstart+ consists of a pack of books and reading materials provided to families at their two-year-old child's statutory health visit. The pack is accompanied by a short priming demonstration, delivered by the health visitor, on shared reading. The evaluati…
The effects of a volunteer mentoring programme on reading outcomes among eight- to nine-year-old children
This article presents the findings of a randomized controlled trial evaluation of the effects of a revised version of the volunteer mentoring programme, Time to Read. Participating children received two 30-minute mentoring sessions per week from volunteer mentors who carried out paired reading activities with the children. The current trial involved 512 children aged eight to nine years from 50 primary schools. The programme was found to be effec…
Using survey data to explore preschool children’s ethnic awareness and attitudes
This article presents the findings of a large-scale survey (n = 1049) of ethnic awareness and attitudes among three to four-year-old children in Northern Ireland. In drawing upon and applying Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, the article demonstrates how, even at this age, the children are already beginning to embody and internalize the cultural habits and dispositions of their respective ethnic groups; namely the Protestant and Catholic communities.…
Engaging science policy
by Patti Lather, New York, Peter Lang Publishers, 2010, 128 pp., US$ 89.95 (hardback), US$ 22.95 (paperback), ISBN 978‐1‐43‐310328‐5 (hardback), 978‐1‐43‐310329‐2 (paperback) Patti Lather has been
A critical review of some recent developments in quantitative research on gender and achievement in the United Kingdom
Over recent years the findings of a number of quantitative research studies have been published in the UK on gender and achievement. Much of this work has emanated from Stephen Gorard and his colleagues and has not only been highly critical of existing approaches to handling quantitative data but has also suggested a number of alternative and, what they claim to be, more valid ways of measuring differential patterns of achievement and underachiev…
(Mis)Representing underachievement
This article provides a brief rejoinder to Gorard and Smith’s reply to an article I published in a previous issue of British Journal of Sociology of Education. In that original article I provided a critical review of their quantitative research on gender and education in the United Kingdom. In their reply to this article, Gorard and Smith seem to agree with many of the points I made. However, they appear to be particularly perplexed by why I had …
The Masculine Habitus as ‘Distributed Cognition’
This article provides a case study demonstrating the active role that 5‐ to 6‐year‐old boys in an English inner‐city, multi‐ethnic primary school play in the appropriation and reproduction of their masculine identities. It is argued that the emphasis on physicality, violence and racism found among the boys cannot be understood without reference to the immediate contexts of the local community and the school within which they are located. In makin…
Troubling identities
The effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in GCSE attainment
This article is based upon a secondary analysis of three successive cohorts of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales and examines the effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment for those who left school in 1997, 1999 and 2001 respectively. The article shows that both social class and ethnicity exert a far greater influence on the GCSE performance of boys and gi…
What Now for the Contact Hypothesis? Towards a New Research Agenda
This article begins with a review of recent research on the Contact Hypothesis. It will be shown that the literature in this area has become essentially closed and self-referential where the core political and theoretical premises that underpin the Hypothesis have been taken for granted and the debates have therefore become restricted simply to how best to measure the influence of inter-group contact. One of the key reasons for this is the lack o…
The effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in GCSE attainment
This article is based upon a secondary analysis of three successive cohorts of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales and examines the effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment for those who left school in 1997, 1999 and 2001 respectively. The article shows that both social class and ethnicity exert a far greater influence on the GCSE performance of boys and gi…
The misallocation of students to academic sets in maths
Drawing upon data gathered from 9301 Year 7 students (12–13 years old) from 46 secondary schools in England, this study represents the first larger‐scale attempt to compare their actual set allocations in maths with the counterfactual position where their allocation to sets is based solely on their prior attainment at the end of primary school [using their Key Stage 2 (KS2) fine‐grained scores in maths]. Through such an analysis, the study found …
Racism and Young Girls' Peer-group Relations
This article draws upon data from an in-depth ethnographic study of 5 and 6 year old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner-city primary school. It focuses on the significance of `race' within young girls' peer-group relations and the ways in which the social dynamics that underlie those relations provide the context for understanding the particular nature and form that racism takes among the girls. This is done through a focus on the experie…
The impact of tracking by attainment on pupil self-confidence over time
The impact of self-fulfilling prophecy in education, and of attainment grouping on pupil self-perception, remain topics of longstanding debate, with important consequences for social in/justice. Focusing on self-confidence, this article draws on survey responses from 9,059 12-13 year olds who were tracked by subject (‘setting’). They provided survey responses when placed in ‘ability’ sets at the start of their secondary schooling, and again late …
Symbolic violence and the neighbourhood
This article focuses on the experiences of 7-8 year old working-class girls in Belfast, Northern Ireland and their attitudes towards education. It shows how their emerging identities tend to emphasize relationships, marriage and motherhood at the expense of a concern with education and future careers. The article suggests that one important factor that can help explain this is the influence of the local neighbourhood. In drawing upon Bourdieu's c…
Constructions of locality and gender and their impact on the educational aspirations of working-class children
Over recent years the moral panic that has surrounded 'boys' underachievement' has tended to encourage crude and essentialist comparisons between all boys and all girls and to eclipse the continuing and more profound effects on educational achievement exerted by social class and 'race'/ethnicity.While there are differences in educational achievement between working-class boys and girls, these differences are relatively minor when comparing the ov…
All Lads Together
This article examines the articulation of racism and masculinity as manifest amongst infant children in a multi‐ethnic, inner‐city primary school. Drawing upon a year‐long ethnographic study of the school, it will highlight some of the inherent problems of multicultural/anti‐racist strategies which are not sufficiendy grounded in an understanding of racism and how it complexly interrelates with other systems of inequality, in this case gender. Th…
Racism, Masculine Peer‐group Relations and the Schooling of African/ Caribbean Infant Boys
The past decade has witnessed the publication of a growing number of important ethnographic studies investigating the schooling experiences of Black students. Their focus has largely been upon student-teacher relations during the students' last few years of compulsory schooling. What they have highlighted is the complexity of racism and the varied nature of Black students' experiences of schooling. Drawing upon data from a year-long ethnographic …
The achievement gap
Despite extensive research on attainment grouping, the impact of attainment grouping on pupil attainment remains poorly understood and contested. This paper presents evidence from a study conducted with 2944 12–13 year olds, from 76 schools in England, who were allocated to between‐class attainment groups (‘setting’) in English and mathematics over the first 2 years of secondary schooling. After controlling for prior attainment, pupils in the top…
Teacher ‘quality’ and attainment grouping
Effects of a book gifting programme on literacy outcomes for foster children
Using survey data to explore preschool children’s ethnic awareness and attitudes
This article presents the findings of a large-scale survey (n = 1049) of ethnic awareness and attitudes among three to four-year-old children in Northern Ireland. In drawing upon and applying Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, the article demonstrates how, even at this age, the children are already beginning to embody and internalize the cultural habits and dispositions of their respective ethnic groups; namely the Protestant and Catholic communities.…
Playing it by the Rules
This article offers an examination of the interplay between politics, ethics, theory and methodology as they impact upon social research, through a critical analysis of the ethnographic study conducted by Peter Foster. It will be argued that his highly contentious claim, to have found no manifestations of racism (either direct or indirect) throughout his study of an inner‐city, multi‐ethnic comprehensive school was, in the last analysis, both mis…
Social Innovation and Social Work
In a national and international context where there is a concern about the effectiveness of social care services for children and families to address chronic, enduring social problems and where there are finite resources available, the concept of social innovation in social work policy and practice to address need in new ways is receiving increased attention. Whilst an attractive term, social innovation in child and family services is not without…
Assessing the reliability and validity of an outcomes star
Purpose This paper aims to assess the reliability, validity and use of the Family Star Plus, one of several Outcomes Stars increasingly used as part of outcomes-based accountability approaches in the delivery of family support services. The Family Star Plus measures progress towards effective parenting but a lack of evidence exists on its psychometric properties and suitability for use as an outcomes tool. Design/methodology/approach Based on dat…
The Letterbox Club book gifting intervention
Racist Harassment in the White Hinterlands
This article explores the nature and extent of racist harassment in predominantly white areas. It is based upon a case study of Northern Ireland and draws upon data from indepth interviews with a total of 32 children and 43 parents drawn from the four largest minority ethnic groups in the region: Chinese, Irish Travellers, South Asians and Black Africans. The article demonstrates that racist harassment is a significant problem in schools in North…
The effects of a volunteer mentoring programme on reading outcomes among eight- to nine-year-old children
This article presents the findings of a randomized controlled trial evaluation of the effects of a revised version of the volunteer mentoring programme, Time to Read. Participating children received two 30-minute mentoring sessions per week from volunteer mentors who carried out paired reading activities with the children. The current trial involved 512 children aged eight to nine years from 50 primary schools. The programme was found to be effec…
Keeping a Sense of Proportion but Losing All Perspective
In 1999 Stephen Gorard published an article in this journal in which he provided a trenchant critique of what he termed the `politician's error' in analysing differences in educational attainment. The main consequence of this error, he argued, has been the production of misleading findings in relation to trends in educational performance over time that have, in turn, led to misguided and potentially damaging policy interventions. By using gender …
Taking Sides in Social Research
(2001). Taking Sides in Social Research: Essays on partisanship and bias. British Journal of Sociology of Education: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 157-169
Playing it by the Rules
This article offers an examination of the interplay between politics, ethics, theory and methodology as they impact upon social research, through a critical analysis of the ethnographic study conducted by Peter Foster. It will be argued that his highly contentious claim, to have found no manifestations of racism (either direct or indirect) throughout his study of an inner‐city, multi‐ethnic comprehensive school was, in the last analysis, both mis…
Growing up in a Classless Society
The idea of a 'classless society' is very much in the forefront of current political debate. For young people who are reaching adulthood and making the difficult transition from school to work, how does this new social order present itself? Dr. Furlong examines this question using material drawn from a nationally representative sample of over 4,000 young people who were contacted over a two and a half year period. He describes their experiences i…
All Lads Together
This article examines the articulation of racism and masculinity as manifest amongst infant children in a multi‐ethnic, inner‐city primary school. Drawing upon a year‐long ethnographic study of the school, it will highlight some of the inherent problems of multicultural/anti‐racist strategies which are not sufficiendy grounded in an understanding of racism and how it complexly interrelates with other systems of inequality, in this case gender. Th…
Racism, Masculine Peer‐group Relations and the Schooling of African/ Caribbean Infant Boys
The past decade has witnessed the publication of a growing number of important ethnographic studies investigating the schooling experiences of Black students. Their focus has largely been upon student-teacher relations during the students' last few years of compulsory schooling. What they have highlighted is the complexity of racism and the varied nature of Black students' experiences of schooling. Drawing upon data from a year-long ethnographic …
Racism, Gender Identities and Young Children
What Now for the Contact Hypothesis? Towards a New Research Agenda
This article begins with a review of recent research on the Contact Hypothesis. It will be shown that the literature in this area has become essentially closed and self-referential where the core political and theoretical premises that underpin the Hypothesis have been taken for granted and the debates have therefore become restricted simply to how best to measure the influence of inter-group contact. One of the key reasons for this is the lack o…
Racism and Young Girls' Peer-group Relations
This article draws upon data from an in-depth ethnographic study of 5 and 6 year old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner-city primary school. It focuses on the significance of `race' within young girls' peer-group relations and the ways in which the social dynamics that underlie those relations provide the context for understanding the particular nature and form that racism takes among the girls. This is done through a focus on the experie…
Constructions of locality and gender and their impact on the educational aspirations of working-class children
Over recent years the moral panic that has surrounded 'boys' underachievement' has tended to encourage crude and essentialist comparisons between all boys and all girls and to eclipse the continuing and more profound effects on educational achievement exerted by social class and 'race'/ethnicity.While there are differences in educational achievement between working-class boys and girls, these differences are relatively minor when comparing the ov…
Taking Sides in Social Research
Taking Sides in Social Research
(2001). Taking Sides in Social Research: Essays on partisanship and bias. British Journal of Sociology of Education: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 157-169
Racist Harassment in the White Hinterlands
This article explores the nature and extent of racist harassment in predominantly white areas. It is based upon a case study of Northern Ireland and draws upon data from indepth interviews with a total of 32 children and 43 parents drawn from the four largest minority ethnic groups in the region: Chinese, Irish Travellers, South Asians and Black Africans. The article demonstrates that racist harassment is a significant problem in schools in North…
Boys and Schooling in the Early Years
Boys' underachievement in education has now become a global concern, taxing the minds of governments across the Western world. Boys and Schooling in the Early Years represents the first major study of its kind to focus specifically on young boys and achievement. It makes a powerful argument for the need to begin tackling the problem of boys' lower educational performance in the early years. This book includes one of the most detailed and up-to-da…
Symbolic violence and the neighbourhood
This article focuses on the experiences of 7-8 year old working-class girls in Belfast, Northern Ireland and their attitudes towards education. It shows how their emerging identities tend to emphasize relationships, marriage and motherhood at the expense of a concern with education and future careers. The article suggests that one important factor that can help explain this is the influence of the local neighbourhood. In drawing upon Bourdieu's c…
The Masculine Habitus as ‘Distributed Cognition’
This article provides a case study demonstrating the active role that 5‐ to 6‐year‐old boys in an English inner‐city, multi‐ethnic primary school play in the appropriation and reproduction of their masculine identities. It is argued that the emphasis on physicality, violence and racism found among the boys cannot be understood without reference to the immediate contexts of the local community and the school within which they are located. In makin…
Troubling identities
The effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in GCSE attainment
This article is based upon a secondary analysis of three successive cohorts of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales and examines the effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment for those who left school in 1997, 1999 and 2001 respectively. The article shows that both social class and ethnicity exert a far greater influence on the GCSE performance of boys and gi…
Keeping a Sense of Proportion but Losing All Perspective
In 1999 Stephen Gorard published an article in this journal in which he provided a trenchant critique of what he termed the `politician's error' in analysing differences in educational attainment. The main consequence of this error, he argued, has been the production of misleading findings in relation to trends in educational performance over time that have, in turn, led to misguided and potentially damaging policy interventions. By using gender …
A critical review of some recent developments in quantitative research on gender and achievement in the United Kingdom
Over recent years the findings of a number of quantitative research studies have been published in the UK on gender and achievement. Much of this work has emanated from Stephen Gorard and his colleagues and has not only been highly critical of existing approaches to handling quantitative data but has also suggested a number of alternative and, what they claim to be, more valid ways of measuring differential patterns of achievement and underachiev…
(Mis)Representing underachievement
This article provides a brief rejoinder to Gorard and Smith’s reply to an article I published in a previous issue of British Journal of Sociology of Education. In that original article I provided a critical review of their quantitative research on gender and education in the United Kingdom. In their reply to this article, Gorard and Smith seem to agree with many of the points I made. However, they appear to be particularly perplexed by why I had …
The effects of a volunteer mentoring programme on reading outcomes among eight- to nine-year-old children
This article presents the findings of a randomized controlled trial evaluation of the effects of a revised version of the volunteer mentoring programme, Time to Read. Participating children received two 30-minute mentoring sessions per week from volunteer mentors who carried out paired reading activities with the children. The current trial involved 512 children aged eight to nine years from 50 primary schools. The programme was found to be effec…
Using survey data to explore preschool children’s ethnic awareness and attitudes
This article presents the findings of a large-scale survey (n = 1049) of ethnic awareness and attitudes among three to four-year-old children in Northern Ireland. In drawing upon and applying Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, the article demonstrates how, even at this age, the children are already beginning to embody and internalize the cultural habits and dispositions of their respective ethnic groups; namely the Protestant and Catholic communities.…
Engaging science policy
by Patti Lather, New York, Peter Lang Publishers, 2010, 128 pp., US$ 89.95 (hardback), US$ 22.95 (paperback), ISBN 978‐1‐43‐310328‐5 (hardback), 978‐1‐43‐310329‐2 (paperback) Patti Lather has been
A cluster randomised controlled trial of “Bookstart+”
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a free book gifting programme, called “Bookstart+”, in improving family reading outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – Bookstart+ consists of a pack of books and reading materials provided to families at their two-year-old child's statutory health visit. The pack is accompanied by a short priming demonstration, delivered by the health visitor, on shared reading. The evaluati…
Paving the way for the use of the SDQ in economic evaluations of school-based population health interventions
Initial evidence suggests the SDQ and CHU9D are related in some of their measurement properties. The mapping algorithm using five SDQ subscales was found to be optimal in predicting mean child health utility. Future research valuing changes in the SDQ scores would contribute to this research
Effects of a book gifting programme on literacy outcomes for foster children
Psychology (28 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Political science (16 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Social science (12 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (11 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)