ESAI is delighted to present the Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 to Professor Áine Hyland in recognition of almost five decades of engagement and leadership in the association.
Áine Hyland is Emeritus Professor of Education and former Vice President of University College Cork. A true pioneer in her vision for education at all levels from primary to Higher Education, her contribution to research, teaching and learning and national policy marks a turning point in our conception of Higher Education in Ireland.
Áine was born in a teachers’ residence (in Athboy, Co. Meath in March 1942) where her father was principal of the national school. From a very early age, she wanted to be a teacher. Áine’s early schooling contributed to her lifelong interest in education. At primary level, she attended a convent girls’ private school, followed by a year in a two-teacher religiously mixed rural national school, and three years in a large convent national school. Having been awarded a county council scholarship, she spent six years as a boarder in a convent secondary school. A call to training in 1959 saw her entering Carysfort College to train as a national teacher but her stay there was short-lived and within months she had left Carysfort to take up a post as a civil servant in the Department of Education.
She spent five years in the Department of Education, initially in the Buildings Branch and subsequently as a research assistant to the Investment in Education team. There she met her husband Bill Hyland, who was the statistician on the team. As the marriage bar was in operation at this time, Áine had to give up her job in the civil service when she married Bill in 1965. Her interest in educational history and policy had, however, been ignited and in the subsequent decade, she combined rearing her three daughters, Fiona, Niamh and Sonja, with completing a B.A.,Dip, Masters and ultimately a Ph.D. in Trinity College Dublin. Áine worked very closely with the late John Coolahan, a former recipient of the ESAI Lifetime Achievement Award, and Susan Parkes, her Ph.D. supervisor. She spent a number of years as a secondary school teacher before her appointment as Admissions Officer and senior lecturer in Carysfort College in 1980.
Always committed to a more inclusive society, Áine was a founder member of the Dalkey School Project during the 1970s, Ireland’s first multi-denominational national school since the foundation of the state, which of course we now know as the hugely successful Educate Together movement. It was during this phase of her life that she became active in the ESAI, attending her first ESAI conference at the University of Ulster in 1978. Among those in attendance at her presentation were John Coolahan and Pádraig Hogan, both of whom would remain lifelong active members of the association and close colleagues of Áine’s.
Áine remained active on various committees of the ESAI in the subsequent decades and was appointed the first female President of the association in 1990. During her tenure as Chair of Education at University College Cork and subsequently Vice President of Academic Affairs, she continued to present at the annual conference and also publish in the association’s journal, Irish Educational Studies. It was also during this time that she produced a number of seminal publications which have significantly shaped scholarship and policy in Irish education, including the 3-volume Irish Educational Documents (1988-94) and Towards a Better Future (co-authored with John Coolahan and Sheelagh Drudy) published in 2017. More recently she has co-edited a special issue of Irish Educational Studies on the theme of educational disadvantage (with Judith Harford and Brian Fleming, 2022) an area in which she has always been active, having chaired the Educational Disadvantage Committee in the 1990s. Collectively, her publications spanning five decades testify to a blend of scholarly analysis and its application to policy which has been the hallmark of her international signature. This impact has been recognised by a number of prestigious awards including the conferring of a Fellowship of the National College of Ireland in 2005, a D.Litt. by University College Dublin in 2015, a D.Sc. by the Royal College of Surgeons in 2016, and membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2018.
In addition to these honours and accolades, Áine has been a wonderful colleague and mentor to so many working in the field of education. An exceptional scholar, colleague, mentor and woman, her contribution to the ESAI, as to education more broadly, will resonate for generations to come.
The Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 was presented by President Céline Healy, and the above citation was prepared by Professor Judith Harford.
The ESAI Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 was presented by President Céline Healy to Prof Áine Hyland ESAI conference at Maynooth University Picture Conor McCabe Photography.
