In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Eamonn Stack Mulvihill as their special guest. Eammon is an Associate Teacher in the School of Education at the University of Limerick (UL) and an EPI∙STEM affiliate. Eamonn is from Moyvane in North Kerry. Eamonn explains how his interest in Engineering and STEM subjects began with his family, in his early years in the Comprehensive Secondary School in Tarbert and later through completion of an engineering teacher education degree in the School of Education in UL.
Today, Eamonn is teaching engineering topics to teacher education students in the School of Education in UL and completing a PhD study in the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) under the supervision of Dr Clodagh Reid, Dr Rónán Dunbar and Dr Richard Kimbell (UK). Eamonn is studying integrated-STEM for students and teachers in post-primary schools in Ireland. This is a topic of national and international interest in an increasingly technological world.STEM education, and integrated-STEM education remain a contested question in the literature and a live policy issue in national reports – especially in relation to the post-primary sector. How to do this integration of the four subject matter areas well, Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Technology for secondary school pupils and teachers is the live issue today and requires deciding on which lenses need to be brought to bear on the topic. Here Eamonn touches on two of these lenses, such as, the interdisciplinary lens and the culture-ethics-gender lens.
Eamonn is deeply interested in social justice, on democratising knowledge and the value of social outreach from the university to make a real difference in community life. His podcast with Dr Dan O’Sullivan from the School of Education entitled ‘ON THE MARGINS’ does just that. The podcast provides a platform for people on the margins to have a voice (e.g. prisoners, travellers), to challenge mainstream biases while aiming for a social celebration of difference, plurality and diversity rather than seeking to assimilate everyone inside some unified pedagogy of indifference.
We conclude today with a poem read and composed by Aisling Kearns, a 3rd year student in the BA in World Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in UL. This original poem, called Déanta Briste was published in 2025 in the collection of contemporary poems called The Story Thursday Book 50 by the Limerick Arts Office to celebrate their 50th Anniversary.
