Dr. John Lalor
Dr John Lalor is an Assistant Professor in the School of Policy & Practice in the Institute of Education, DCU. John is also Director of Research at DCU's Further Education and Training Research Centre (FETRC).
Research Interests
John’s research interests are in the areas of Education for Democracy, Citizenship Education, and Further Education and Training.
He is currently DCU co-pi on the DEMOCRAT project (2023-2026) https://democrat-horizon.eu/, an EU Horizon funded project which aims to develop curricula for Education for Democracy (EfD) based on a framework of responsible democratic competences and to develop a toolbox to support the development of transformative EfD practices in the EU.
John was also the DCU lead researcher on the CITIDEV project https://citedev.eu/, a 3-year, EU Jean Monnet funded project which ran from 2021 to 2024 and which looked at how citizenship education in Europe could respond to some of the emerging threats to democratic societies.
John acted as a researcher on the En-Abilities project which developed tools aimed at encouraging autonomous language learning for adult students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in Europe and in Ireland it provided support in learning English to promote the social inclusion of adults living in Direct Provision http://en-abilities.eu/.
He recently managed a 2-year, DCU funded research project, which sought to capture the student experience of newly established entry routes between Further Education and Training Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) programmes at NFQ level 5/6 and two NFQ level 8 undergraduate degree programmes in Dublin City University.
John recently completed a 3-year term as the DCU academic representative on the regional steering group of College Connect, a Higher Education Authority (HEA) funded three-year PATH 3 (Programme for Access to Higher Education) project which aims to admit 400 students from specific target groups, who are under-represented in college https://collegeconnect.ie/.
He was the DCU pi on the CIM project (2018-2021), an Erasmus+ research project which aimed to promote creativity and innovation management in an innovative blended learning and validation programme at the interface between higher education (HE) and business https://cim-project.eu/.
John’s previous research activity focussed on two thematic areas through EU funded research projects: Access and Inclusion in Education in national and European contexts (Includ-Ed, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/28603/es), and Curriculum Assessment in Vocational Education settings (Credivoc).
John conducted his PhD studies in the area of Education in Culturally Diverse settings and was a member of the DCU Migration and Interculturalism Initiative. He has organised a number of national and international conferences, workshops and seminars in the area of Intercultural and Inclusive Education in DCU. Other research work has focussed on Curriculum Development and Implementation, Curriculum Evaluation and Assessment in Vocational Training contexts, Social Disadvantage and Pluralism and Diversity. John has also conducted research for The Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council Arts Office into Community Music practice in informal contexts. John has been involved in the design and provision of education courses for people with disabilities and his background is in the Arts where he has acted at various times at consultancy, management, practitioner and research level.