EPISTEM PODCAST

In this episode Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD discuss the implications of any uncritical acceptance of Gen AI tools into education and the critical wide-awakeness (see Maxine Greene) needed in describing the ethical, relational, social care and heart work of education conducted by reflexive teachers as authors of their work. 
Geraldine and Michelle consider the research findings from a special issue of Learning, Media & Technology in 2025 by Professor Neil Selwyn [University of Monash, Australia] and others, see the citation and link: Selwyn, N., Ljungqvist, M., & Sonesson, A. (2025). When the prompting stops: exploring teachers’ work around the educational frailties of generative AI tools. Learning, Media & Technology, 50 (3), 310-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2025.2537959
The study critically examined teachers work in Australia and Sweden within a reform narrative promoting the use of Gen AI tools within the promise of a reduction in teacher workload. The findings revealed the myth behind this promise and went beyond teachers’ deficiency in digital skills to critically scrutinise reform minded understandings of teaching, learning and assessment – more as data-based interactions rather than as complex professional judgements that experienced teachers make in situ while anticipating pedagogies, deciding educational value and attending to social relations and content knowledges.
Questions arising from this special issue mirror concerns expressed in a recent book by Kyriazi et al (2026), ‘The Biological Turn in Education Policy’ by Elgar Publishing (see link: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-biological-turn-in-education-policy-9781035373215.html?srsltid=AYCX9vL2fDpyatw6ez5txuHKXq0rpaqkybbiip_aTVCD29L8qgxRNu3n).We are invited to critically question the human condition and knowledge-power relations as understood today in education and ethics and the potential role of AI. This invites everyone working in education to develop critical and care-based capacities to understand the ‘hidden curriculum’ in new and different ways.
The music interlude today is by Ignacio Di Martino, a first-year student in the BA in World Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Ignacio is from Argentina and is a songwriter and acoustic guitarist. Here Ignacio sings and plays one of his original compositions ‘Ciello’.

In this episode Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD discuss the current policy push from UNESCO and others for social and emotional learning and the inherent dangers in how any of this gets framed.
 Michelle introduces papers from Audrey Bryan, Professor ofSociology in Dublin City University whose research clearly shows how UNESCO changes the script away from the conscience of humanity and the collective and more toward the conscious human brain. Clearly there is a need for young people to release their capacity for empathy and inclusion and to be able to self-regulate and nurture a felt sense of personal resilience.
 However, the difficulty arises when this need for well-beingand inclusion is positioned as a problem of the individual only, where the broader system, structures and power dynamics and differentials are framed out, silenced and/or otherwise denied. We then arrive at a system of education that is a prescriptive system where young people are expected to find their inner grit and survive systemic injustices and inequalities.
 Geraldine speaks to the current framing of Science-in-Society in the national curriculum for science education in Ireland and elsewhere. The policy intent here is to connect science with real world applications as an appreciation of Science-in-Society, an unqualified ‘good’. New research argues that something deeper and more meaningful is needed, a critical appraisal that allows science teachers and students debate the issues in deep and critical engagingways that take into account the power and limits of science. Gandolfi et al. provide a case study of a dam bursting in Brazil in 2015 as a result of the carelessness employed in the mining industry and the devastation caused to the local population through this system of extraction. The case study allows a critical debate that places ethics and the power and limits of science at the heart of the issue, inclusive of history, context, technology, economics and politics.
 The music interlude today is by Ignacio Di Martino, a first-yearstudent in World Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Ignacio is from Argentina and is a songwriter and acoustic guitarist. Here Ignacio sings and plays one of his original compositions ‘I Fancy You’.

Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome everyone back to the start of another academic year 2026-2027 in the EPI∙STEM research centre in the School of Education at the University of Limerick.
Geraldine and Michelle open the discussion through recalling some of the summer events and chatting about their summer readings in educational policy and in research. This is particularly of interest given the frenzy today in the world of education about the rise of AI tools in learning, teaching and research and issues in the wider world that are threatening democracy.
We finished up the summer with a summer school in UL for our ESAI Critical and Feminist Special Interest group that was well attended and had keynotes from Professor Emeritus Kathleen Lynch from UCD and Professor Emeritus Helen Gunter from the University of Manchester. In the last few days, we started the new year with a milestone celebration by the Sixmilebridge Historical Association marking Minister Donogh O’Malley’s free education scheme in 1966. The plaque was unveiled by the Minister for Education and Youth Hildegarde Naughton T.D.
What is of greatest interest here is that democracy alwayscomes into being in every country through its education system. That makes for a very special question today: how and in what ways are we bringing democracy into being in our education system today, in Ireland elsewhere.
Geraldine introduced the listeners to a book by Kyriazi et al. published earlier this year by Elgar publishing entitled ‘The Biological Turn in Education Policy’. While in the last century there may have been competition or peaceful co-existence between a humanistic paradigm in education and a more economistic-technical paradigm, it is clear that in this century the production of knowledge in education has started to migrate from the social sciences and humanities to the life sciences, and the deeper connection to the individual body and brain. Michelle and Geraldine tease out some of the implications of this, both for general education and for STEM education now and into the future. 
The musical performance today is by Rosemary O’Malley and Estaban Flores, both graduates of the Master’s in Traditional Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in UL. Rosemary, originally from Chicago, works in the European Centre for the Study of Hate in the School of Law in UL. Esteban, from France works in SAVINS music store in Limerick city. Here Rosemary and Esteban play a set of three jigs, My Darling Child, The Piper’s Picnic and The Munster Bacon.

In this replay episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Professor Laura Colucci-Gray as their special guest. Professor Colucci-Gray is Professor of Science Education in the School of Education at Moray House, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Originally recorded following Professor Colucci-Gray's keynote address at the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) 2025 Conference in Copenhagen, this conversation explores her perspectives on the importance of positioning the arts alongside the sciences in science education and sustainability.
Professor Colucci-Gray takes a feminist and new materialist approach to science education, highlighting the significance of affectivity beyond evidence and advocating for social and emotional development as essential not only for human flourishing but also for nurturing the capacity to care for others and for the wider world. She discusses how these perspectives contribute to the sustainability of democratic society, the economy and the environment.
Drawing on her extensive work in science education research, Professor Colucci-Gray offers rich insights into the transdisciplinary nature of science education and the vital role of the arts in learning. She also discusses research and development projects that support embodied and place-based learning practices. Among these is the STEAM education project Garden as a Provocation, developed with a team of teacher educators and artists at the University of Edinburgh. The project invites science teachers to engage with the garden both as a metaphor and as a real-world learning space, inspiring arts-based pedagogies that encourage ethical, open, contemplative and democratic approaches to science learning while fostering care for self, others and the environment.
The music featured in this episode is by Caoimhe Fitzpatrick, then a first-year student on the BA in World Music at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. Caoimhe performs her original composition, Liberties Baby, an acoustic reflection on human freedom.
Originally released in 2025. We are delighted to share this conversation again with our listeners as part of our EPI·STEM podcast replay series.

EPI•STEM PODCAST — Conversation with Professor Sara Tolbert Originally recorded in June 2025 and republished as part of our continuing EPI•STEM series.
In this episode, co‑hosts Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD speak with Professor Sara Tolbert, Professor of STEM Education at the University of Melbourne (Monash), where she co‑leads the Science Education in the Anthropocene Impact Lab. The lab is dedicated to reimagining humanity’s relationship with the natural world and exploring how science education must evolve in response to planetary challenges.
Professor Tolbert, formerly Professor of Science Education at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, discusses how the Impact Lab positions science education at the intersection of nature, culture, and society. This framing opens up new questions about how we teach science and how we prepare young people to navigate complex ecological, political, economic, and sociocultural systems shaping contemporary planetary conditions.
The conversation explores emerging and contested literature reshaping science education as both a theoretical and social movement. Professor Tolbert highlights new strands within the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA)—including futurism, intersectionality, inclusion, and expanded knowledge systems—that signal a shift in how science education’s purposes, histories, and practices are being reimagined.
Today’s musical selection is “Tears,” a Cape Breton waltz composed by Gerry Holland and performed by Dr. Avril McLoughlin, Lecturer in Music Education at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.