Thomas Delahunty

About

Dr. Tom Delahunty (PhD, MSc. Psych, B.Tech(ed), CPsychol)  joined the Department of Education in Maynooth in January 2022. He has previously held academic posts at the University of Birmingham, University College Cork, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Limerick. Tom has worked across psychology and education programmes in his career to date but has a keen interest in teacher education and STEM areas. He holds dual qualifications as a second-level teacher and psychologist and is a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.
 
Tom teaches across the suite of programmes in the department, in particular the BSc. Education programmes (Mathematics, Science & Computer Science) as well as the Professional Masters in education and doctoral programmes (PhD and EDD).
 
Tom’s core research interests lie in the areas of STEM education across all levels of schooling, where he is particularly interested in issues of equality (e.g. gender) as well as the interaction of presage variables with mathematics performance and identity. He also has core interests in the psychology of problem solving and in particular how cognitive processes of conceptualisation and representation affect performance in mathematics and science. He actively researches in the broad area of teacher education and is committed to critical analysis of policy as it applies to practice and identity formation/change in teaching and learning contexts. In addition to these core areas, he actively promotes critical approaches to quantitative and educational research and has an emerging interest in how issues of power and neoliberalism interact with research practices and discourses in the field.